vote
7.5
- Bands:
TERMINAL NATION - Duration: 00:40:15
- Available from: 03/05/2024
- Label:
-
20 Buck Spins
Streaming not yet available
Death metal and hardcore, in a mixture which, due to its heaviness and menace, immediately brings to mind the exploits of groups such as Disgrace, Skinfather and – obviously – Xibalba. With this their second full-length, published again by 20 Buck Spin, Terminal Nation do not take a step back from the style explored in their debut “Holocene Extinction” and in the split with the Japanese Kruelty, confirming themselves as a real caterpillar intent on crushing everything and everyone on the wave of an angry and visceral sound, the ideal background for a post-apocalyptic scenario made of ruined cities, advancing deserts and gangs of motorized marauders.
Music that has nothing in common with the digital, harmless and cleaned up version of what today, very often, is defined as deathcore, and which rather – as in the case of the bands mentioned at the beginning – finds in the concreteness and brutality of the school years Nineties/early 2000s are their expressive cornerstones, between acrimonious tones and belligerent atmospheres not inclined to leave room for light-heartedness or commercial winks. A flow that is first of all intense, in the usual way, bright artwork by Adam Burke (Acephalix, Eternal Champion, Gatekeeper), and which for forty minutes sees our band focus on the amalgam of (death) metal and hardcore of the previous chapters without giving up the impetus and spontaneity that made it successful in the Stars and Stripes underground circuit, strengthening the structures and giving the whole a more orderly development.
Where once, in the grip of the urgency and barbarity that a background based on Obituary, Disembodied, Bolt Thrower and All Out War could not avoid bringing with it, there were songs that were both incendiary, but also a little chaotic, which tended to burn quickly and carelessly, today we come across a more fluid and organized tracklist, for which the attack of the title track is enough (softangelian like some that came from the pen of master Brian Ortiz) to clarify things and start the offensive according to a decidedly imperious progression of riffs and tempo changes.
Of course, the level of the authors of works like “Hasta la muerte” and “Tierra y libertad” is not always reached by the ten tracks that make up this “Echoes of the Devil’s Den”, but the feeling is that today Terminal Nation have understood how reach their balance between power and lucidity, between demolishing impulses and compositional growth, also indulging in some forays into melodic territories (the instrumental “Embers of Humanity”, “Merchants of Bloodshed”) and enhancing the interventions of the guests called to ‘duet’ with the gigantic frontman Stan Liszewski (in order, Todd Jones of Nails, Zak Vargas of Elysia, Jesse Leach of Killswitch Engage, K. Kennedy of Sex Prisoner and Dwid Hellion of Integrity).
The result is therefore a hybrid and dynamic work, the result of the meeting/clash between genres whose common denominator can be found in the absence of frills and in aggression as an instrument of redemption and catharsis. A work where ‘ignorance’ is not synonymous with ‘caciara’ or crude solutions, and which riff after riff, breakdown after breakdown, immortalizes a planet and a society now in collapse.
On our side, we just have to embrace its apocalyptic vision and enjoy its concentration of ferocity, resentment and roughness, while the name of Terminal Nation – in the wake of episodes of the caliber of “Written by the Victor”, “No Reform (New Age Slave Patrol)” and “Immolation (Of Mother Earth)” – increases its prices within the global hardcore/metal scene.
