Reviews: Minors, Kadinja, Ambrotos, Resurgence (Paul S & Paul H)

The album opens with a short instrumental/intro track called Abject Bodies. This starts with a blast of feedback, before a hugely heavy riff crashes in and batters the listener. Second track Consumed bursts out of the end of Abject Bodies, and we are in fast aggressive hardcore territory, and it’s beautifully angry and in your face. The track ends with a heavy as anything sludge, which loses the speed, but keeps the anger. Meanderist is another fast piece of very fast hardcore, in places on this album the fast hardcore is verging on grindcore. The track has a slower, more discordant ending, which is particularly nasty. Flesh Prison is a beautifully well balanced mix of fast and sickeningly slow. The slow parts have a groove the size of a planet, and the fast parts are quite punky and pretty unhinged. Boneyard is another fast one with a punky feel to it, if this was a little faster we’d be calling this a grind album. The second half of the track is a little slower and has a relentless quality to it. The track ends in feedback, which then runs into the next track Erode.

Erode is a massive slab of sludge. It is slow but again with a huge groove to it that will definitely have you banging your head. Although slow, this song does have a brooding menace to it that is incredibly powerful. Final Track Garden Of Dismalism is another slow and heavy sludgy track. It does have a couple of quieter moments in it, but if anything, it just makes the heavy parts feel heavier. The track keeps to the same tempo most of the way through, but slowly increases the intensity, getting more and more fervent, bigger and bigger until the end of the track, where it batters the listener into submission; which is a great way to end the album. ‘Difficult’ second album? Naa, Minors have had no difficulty here. They have produced an excellent piece of sludgy hardcore. Fast and viscous, slow and powerful, and really satisfying, Abject Bodies is a fantastic album, from a band who seem to be excelling themselves at the moment. Fantastic album! 8/10

Kadinja: Super 90 (Arising Empire) [Paul H]

Badged as progressive metal, which is what all Djent bands appear to describe themselves as these days, Kadinja hail from Paris and were most recently seen on tour with VOLA and Monuments. They blend technical excellence with clean soaring vocals, huge breakdowns and multiple time changes and a controlled aggression which simmers throughout and when it erupts it is certainly an explosion of volcanic proportions. It’s not all clean vocals with some much more forced shouting style adding weight to the tracks.
Thick sounds emerge from the opening track Empire, whilst there is reference to countrymen Gojira on From The Inside amongst other tracks. Of course, it is the godfathers of chaos, Meshuggah who are always close to the lips when you hear bands of this calibre, and the choppy guitar work and vibrant bass lines certainly draw some comparisons. However, at other times, the harmonies are much gentler and stray much closer to bands such as Tesseract. I certainly found this album enjoyable to listen to, something that I rarely experience with this style of progressive rock. I suspect if you enjoy bands that use as many strings as you have fingers, this will be a real joy. 7/10

Ambrotos: Cosmic Annulus (Sleaszy Rider Records) [Paul S]

Ambrotos are a three piece from Greece. They formed in 2017 and have only released one EP before this one. That EP came out last year, and as its title is written in Greek script, I can’t tell you what it was called. The EP has 3 tracks of broadly orthodox black metal. The EP kicks off with the track Oracle Veracities, a battering mix of viscous tremolo picked riffs and blast beats. Musically we are in similar territory to Marduk, 1349 or Tsjuder, we also get some rather effective chanting as well.

Title track Cosmic Annulus, is a blast of tremolo picking that keeps the same tempo throughout, giving the song a relentless quality that reminded me of Von a little. Final song Vortical is a mix of blasting tremolo picked riffs with softer, brooding quieter passages with a spoken word part to it. The track manages to be brooding and viscous at the same time, which gives it a very atmospheric quality. Cosmic Annulus is a great EP, great songs, well played. The production job is a little noisy in places, but this is an EP, so you have to expect that. An enjoyable piece of black metal orthodoxy, time to record an album now I think. 7/10