BLACK BREATH - Slaves Beyond Death
October 20, 2015, 8 years ago
(Southern Lord Recordings)
I dig Black Breath, no doubt about it, the band hitting that sweet spot between Kurt Ballou-produced noisy metallic hardcore and old-school Swedish death just right, which they definitely do again here on album number three. The title track has a great plod to it, the band realizing the power of a tune that drags you across the floor instead of just hammering you over the head; but when they do pick up the pace, as they do on much of the album, it delivers with just as much impact. And, man, it's all about the production to these ears, Ballou once again proving he is master of the board, the sounds he gets just absolutely unreal.
And the band is getting pretty unreal themselves: album centrepiece “Seed Of Cain” is a masterful piece of melodic metal, the band going mid-tempo and adding in soaring leads that capture and invigorate and add life instead of the usual Black Breath kill-kill approach. Meanwhile, “Burning Hate” delivers with d-beat power and “A Place Of Insane Cruelty”'s stomp will remind you why Entombed ruled so hard in '91 and will give you that same feeling that listening to classic Entombed records did, a rare thing indeed.
