It is certainly Havok searching for this band as there are no less than six metal groups sharing the same name. This are the Swedish lot though, a fairly young group who only formed in 2005 and are releasing their debut album now. The youth of the project should not put you off at all and Havok seem to have been getting some impressive reviews for this album, well here is another as it is pretty damn good.
Starting with ‘Avaye Penhan’ the listener is transported straight into a Middle Eastern bazaar; glasses clink, hawkers trade their wares and there is a constant babble of conversation played over the ethnic instrumentation of a Persian tar. We go into a guitar flurry and are pitched up into ‘The Monsoon’ which quickly boots into vicious sounding death metal. It is the respite from the battery which again has a native sounding instrumental part and elongated roars from singer Johan really giving this a memorable feel. Plenty of bands can simply blast and roar away but you are aware that this lot are going to pepper their album with some unique ideas whilst doing so. Having said that though, this is a real standout track on the album and things that follow do not always have quite such an identity about them. Still, whilst raging away with the more expected brutal salvo in numbers such as ‘A Pyrrhic Victory For Humanity’ they inject plenty of atmosphere with slower grandiose parts. Drummer Johan, pushes the backbone here with cymbal crunches and crashes over a tumultuous battery and the twin guitars duel away neatly.
There is a fair proportion of coruscating, grinding moments to be found as well and guitars at times really grate away at you. Vocally too I am reminded a bit of Travis Ryan and sometimes the music is a bit reminiscent of Cattle Decapitation with the barked out indignant vocals honing in on you. A nice moody instrumental ‘Monologue With The Sky’ breaks up the album, running over what sounds like a cinema projector giving it as ghostly atmosphere. The second half settles into a groove and does not offer quite so many surprises. However it must be said that this is the first brutal death metal album that I have heard which has a break for a passage of birdsong and no doubt it will also be the last!
Reading between the lines there is a biblical concept here dealing with plagues and with the sweet birdsong coming before songs dealing with swarms of humans and the final track ‘Season Of The Locust’ it is apparent nothing is going to be left to trill away harmonically at the end here, as the land is stripped of all life. The album finishes like it started with the song of the Persian tar wrapping up this impressive debut. If you are looking for something that merges together brutality with ideas reminiscent of groups such as Salem and Orphaned Land this is well worth checking out.
http://www.havok.se
http://www.myspace.com/sophisticatedkillingmachine
