Description
Well well, this is a delightful shitload of noise, dragging itself through my speakers like a thick slab of tar, blackening everything it touches. Ok, maybe not tar because tar is way slower than this thing. But before I go into the review, let’s complete the list of genres. We have sludge, hardcore, punk, doom, thrash metal, noise, black metal, new wave, grunge, alternative rock, death metal, grindcore, blues, stoner, progressive, noise rock and psychedelic rock. And I’m only halfway through this album.
Chestburster is a trio from Kouvola, Finalnd. Besides from being a pretty damn heavy band, they are obsessed with horror movies, which obviously explains the band name. According to their biography, they make music whenever they manage to drag themselves away from the Alien-boxset. As far as I’m concerned, judging from what I’m listening to now, they can do that a lot more from now on.
The first thing that came to mind when I was listening to opener ‘Faces In The Rain’ and follower ‘Experienced Virgin’ was: “this is what The Ramones would have sounded like if they were a sludge metal band”. With thick, fuzzed-out guitars and dynamic, up-tempo drums, Chestburster immediately convinced me, which sometimes isn’t easy. Yet, these sludgy punk songs suddenly made place for something different.
‘Gas Station Pilgrim’ for example, or the bluesy follower ‘The Arm Stretches Out’ slow the whole thing down and turn this album into a psychedelic doom metal thing. Then there are slabs of grunge, with depressed, clean vocals and also some outbursts of blast beats. Some of the solos remind me of old Slayer or Testament stuff while other passages seem to come close to Fields Of The Nephilim.
‘Rojo Sangre’ might be one of the most varied songs here, blending about half of the aforementioned genres into one epic song. ‘Licking Letters’ feels like something from the dirtiest corners of the grunge scene in the nineties, and so on. I’m not sure if you can still follow but that’s ok. By now you should be aware of two definite facts about this album. One: it’s heavy. Two: it’s varied. So if you like heavy analog music with plenty of variation you don’t have to buy any other album than this one this year. This one will certainly do…
Serge
