Fallujah - The Harvest Wombs

Just being progressive in general is hard enough as it is, let alone actually making it sound good. Recently, there have been quite a few brand new bands that have proven to be truly progressive and amazing. Some of those bands include The Contortionist, Element, Mutiny Within, Periphery, and probably most of all, Fallujah. I’ve only been listening to Fallujah for a couple of months now, but I’ve already had a chance to see them perform live, talk with their vocalist, and buy a CD and a poster. Although I’m pretty sure that Fallujah wouldn’t use the same words as I do when describing their music, the general concepts that are described are identical between our two descriptions. Here’s something that I thought was funny; when I first saw their album cover, I said “this must be a Sumerian Records band.” For those of you that think I’m crazy, look at the cover for The Discovery by Born of Osiris and then look at the cover for The Harvest Wombs. Do you notice that they both have the same three weird clear-skinned muscular humanoids in space with rings floating around their heads? The first thing that I did when I got the CD was look at the booklet to see who made the album cover…and to my great surprise (not really), it was made by the same artists who did The Discovery! So putting the breathtaking artwork aside, the music behind it is far beyond conceivable.

I played each of the songs in order when I first listened to the album. I’m pretty sure that you’ll agree with me when I say that the first two words that popped into my head when Alpha Incipient started was “BLACK METAL!” When I talked to the vocalist about this, he said “atmosphere” instead of “black metal”, which is still the same general concept because one of the common characteristics that many black metal bands have is an ambient/atmospheric sound, especially in depressive black metal. Of course, after I was surrounded by this atmospheric black metal-influenced sound, the music finished rising and came down on top of me like a meteorite of brutality. Instead of the music leaping out of you and ripping you to shreds, Fallujah rips your skin off layer by layer. In other words, it’s extremely technical and dark but with a very thick layer of melodic ambience. Another thing that I love about Alpha Incipient also has some extremely colorful guitar solos that don’t seem to fit the brutality of the majority of the album has, but sound amazing.

The thing with the guitar solos is also apparent in Ritual of Godflesh, one of the more brutal and angry tracks. The rhythm guitars on this song are played at extremely low-pitched tones that really give a lot of body to the sound. While all of this amazing guitar work is being done for the duration of the record, wait until you’re done listening to the record. Play the record a second time, except instead of focusing on the vocals and guitars, focus your attention on the drummer (although he kind of pulls you in so you might not even be able to help yourself the first time). The drummer has one of the most breathtaking blast beats I’ve ever heard in my life. Here’s the thing about THIS guy that I love: if you become familiar with the differences in the drumming styles between black metal and brutal death/grindcore, you’ll notice that they actually have two different kinds of blast beats. The Fallujah drummer’s blast beats sound like they would fit in PERFECTLY in either style! On top of that, when he’s not going nuts, his slower fills give the music an indestructible backbone of creativity and color.

Ok, so now that I feel that I’ve given you most of what I like about them, let’s talk about their vocalist. He’s good, I love him, but his growls are a little…there’s just SOMETHING about them that doesn’t make them jump out at me like I would expect. I guess it’s because even though his growls are EXTREMELY deep, they’re not quite powerful enough. Yeah, that’s it! Do me a favor and listen to something off of Planetary Duality by The Faceless and notice how fucking POWERFUL the growls are, and then listen to Ritual of Godflesh by Fallujah. I feel that even though they’re deep, they’re weak. But that might even just be a fuck-up on the mixing board during the production process of the album. But other than that, there’s literally NOTHING that I can think of that bothers me (in fact, the vocals don’t even bother me in the slightest bit).

Fallujah is one of the best new bands to reach my ears since I got my hands on Mutiny Within’s debut in February, 2010. Of course, I would give this album a PERFECT SCORE and would recommend it to anyone who likes metal, especially the PROGRESSIVE stuff out there. So a basic way to describe it to someone (besides just saying progressive death) is that they’re technical death with a strong black metal influence and a touch of deathcore. I would also like to thank the band for causing a moshpit that ripped a huge hole in my favorite pants and left a huge scrape on my knee. I CANNOT WAIT to hear new material from Fallujah!