Artist: Entrenched
Title: Preemptive Strike
Type: Album
Label: Self-Released

“War and metal / War and metal / Goes together like / A horse and carriage”. Frank Sinatra didn’t write these lyrics, but I like to think that if “Old Blue Eyes” had been born in the 70’s and sat around in a 1989 Ford Escort driving to and from underground death metal shows in a cut off denim shirt with Impaled Nazarene back patches and a faded Hellhammer T-shirt underneath, then these would have been the words to his most famous song. It is a fact though, that man’s inhumanity to man, while a tragedy for all those involved and a sad indictment on the human condition also does have the silver lining of making for some great heavy metal moments. Every cloud, and all that, eh? So sure, we have the tragedies of both world wars, and the despicable brutality of the Middle Eastern conflicts, but at least we got War Ensemble, Bolt Thrower, Hail of Bullets and a billion other great tunes out of the bargain. Silver linings…always where you least expect them.

Entrenched hail from New Jersey. They like death metal. They like War. Hey! Neat idea! Let’s mix the two! To be fair, Entrenched eschew the mid-tempo head nodding approach brought to the fore by Bolt Thrower, and instead go for a more rabid take on the genre, with nods to the bassy twanging insanity of the afore mentioned Impaled Nazarene and their almost punky vibe, with the none-more-aggressive death/thrash of Destroyer 666. The stars of the piece here are improbably the bass guitar (which is much more prominent in the mix than in most other death metal acts, with an egregiously sickeningly twangy sound), and the deeply scything guitar riffs, which race along to the back drop of the simple but effective drumming. There are some real gems here; I particularly liked “Landbrecher 666”, about the aborted “Supertank” that Hitler had planned to have built – a mammoth vehicle, it would have sported two naval guns, normally seen on battleships, on it’s three story high hull. “Anaesthetic Death” is a brooding dark number about the desensitization of Vietnam era troops to committing war crimes while addicted to narcotics. It’s chilling summary perfectly accompanying the violence of the music,

“Close my eyes, see all who’ve died I don’t care my brain is fried Awaiting Death, contemplating, Fuck this shit, no regretting”.

All of this is rabidly delivered. At just over a half an hour for nine tracks, this is pretty breathless stuff. The velocity and grit-teethed violence of the delivery makes this all the more visceral. The punky vibe is helpfully assisted by the lo-fi production, which makes no apologies for the grit and filth in the sound, and is actually all the better for it. There isn’t much in the way of polish here, all of the attendant hatred and spite is delivered direct to your ears. War isn’t pretty, and neither is “Preemptive strike”, but as with war, the fascination with naked violence remains. An excellent, filthy release that won’t try and hide its true nature. I love it.

http://www.myspace.com/entrenchedusa

Chris Davison

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