The Modern Age Slavery - Damned To Blindness [CD]

Napalm Records - Out 1st December

November 17, 2008, 07:07 PM

Views: 882   Comments: 0

There is always an emphasis, from a marketing point of view, to convey the music on an album through the artwork, so that the purchaser can know roughly what to expect when buying an artist's releases. The Modern Age Slavery have got this one perfect, it is simply brutal, so much so that I can barely look at the mangled face on the cover, with all those instruments and hooks pulling at the blood splattered cadaver.

Damned To Blindness is 40 minutes of brutal metal, dancing in between death and grind and never really straying outside those two constraints. There is no relenting on Damned To Blindness, it is balls to the wall all the way through. Sometimes metal bands will chuck in an instrumental, interlude or some other music concoction as a way of creating a minor piece of diversity or simple use of dynamics. The only attempt at creating something like this is through the intro track, which is some random noise with the sound of chains (i.e. slaves). I get the point of this gesture but I find it completely unnecessary and a waste of a minute. Damned To Blindness would have been better going straight into the second track, creating more of a 'slap-you-in-the-face approach'.

The album is technically pretty good, with some of the most compressed drums and guitars that I’ve heard in recent years, but when you're playing as fast as The Modern Age Slavery, it is nice to have some clarity. The riffs are pretty wholesome, varying between chunky slower riffs, blast beat thrashier grind riffs and off key, discordant parts. The vocals are probably the best part, as they are powerful and also show a variety of techniques, ranging from low lows to screeching highs and everywhere in between. Damned To Blindness is on the whole a pretty solid release with good riffs, great production and some top quality vocals; it just needed a little bit of originality and it could’ve been something special.


http://www.myspace.com/themodernageslavery

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