Artist: Fuck Your Shadow From Behind
Title: Freigeist
Type: Album
Label: Bastardized Recordings

This violent little debut from these Germans, recorded in their native tongue (even if their daft band name isn’t), will probably miss the radar of many of the fans who will embrace it the most, although such fans are extremely hard to define given the range of noise on display here. It is equal parts metalcore and death metal, without being generic deathcore (shudder), or boring in the slightest. Drummer Fabi blasts his way through various sections, and is the real driving force behind the band, although guitarists Niki and Sven aren’t far behind in the frenetic mix, and the solos hit all the right notes.

The actual sound isn’t the most original you’ll hear this year, but you can’t help but be blown away by the brutality from one song to the next. Whether it’s the chugging Dying Fetus style slam of ‘Der Wahrheit Zweites Gesicht’, headed by the yapping duo of Adi and Bar, or the tremolo picking of ‘Das Erloschen der Qual (Part 1)’, this album is a beast, which sometimes veers on the side of breakdowns, but never gets trapped in the formulaic nature of the deathcore genre. In fact, some elements of this album verge on what some may once have called ‘noisecore’, the abrasive guitars and hollow drumming of which form mind-blowing soundscapes reminiscent of the likes of Cult Of Luna and Total Javla Morka. This experimentalism (which emphasis on the ‘mental’) is continued in ‘Zwielicht’ and ‘Ein Tagwerk’, which got so far as introducing some acoustic guitar interludes.

A nifty little record, and one that never lets up, once this band gets more publicity (and perhaps a better band name), these guys could be the antidote to the ever-expanding and ever-boring deathcore scene.

http://www.myspace.com/fuckyourshadowfrombehind

James Young

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