Just like Rings of Saturn, A Past Unknown, and plenty of
other young metal bands out there, American thrash death band Strychnia have
been taking advantage of social media to get their music out there since the
release of their debut in 2011. From the looks of it, Strychnia seems to be
doing pretty fucking good with all of the worldwide attention they’ve been
getting on the internet’s biggest social media sites. Like other music lovers
out there, I get fucking bombarded with tons of metal and rock bands out there
telling me to “check out” their music. Well, I discovered Strychnia on Twitter,
and after witnessing the same type of extreme hype that I saw with A Past
Unknown, I decided to check out their debut that they had up for listening.
Everyone knows that a lot of those bands out there on the net are just plain
shitty and don’t really have any future; Strychnia is NOT one of those bands.
This is the kind of quality, talented, skilled, and top-notch music people are
looking for! Everything from the production quality to the vocals has just
continued to impress me.
Strychina plays the same basic type of metal that
DevilDriver, Sadus, Revocation, Swashbuckle, and Cavalera Conspiracy play. It’s
that mix of thrash metal and death metal that has an end result of a death
metal sound with sort of a rock n’ roll feel; some groove. That groove can be
traced back to both old school and modern thrash metal bands like Bonded by
Blood, Testament, Anthrax, Exodus, Death Angel, Metallica, Overkill, and
Tankard. Although unlike Cavalera Conspiracy and Revocation, Strychnia has a much,
much heavier and less melodic sound that is more similar to that of
DevilDriver.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about thrash metal,
it’s that the sound of the drums can make a big difference. Of course, what
truly matters is how good the drummer is, but that’s not really much of an
issue in this case. The sound of the drums on this album couldn’t be more
perfect. They sound exactly like the ones on Bonded by Blood’s fantastic debut,
Feed the Beast. The way everything sounds so fucking thick with a lot of bass
and mid-range and little treble helps bring out the brutality. This also helps
bring out the intensity of Strychnia’s death metal side. Except the different
between the drums on this album and the ones on Feed the Beast is that the ones
on Feed the Beast don’t have NEARLY as much reverb as the drums do on the
Strychnia record. But seriously, in all honesty, even though the drummer’s
style, skill, and obvious talent make all the difference, the way the drums
sound on here just absolutely brings everything up.
The distortion of the guitars blend extremely well with the
way everything sounds. They don’t have too much of a high-pitched crunch and
they aren’t too metallic sounding (like a lot of bands recently), they’re just
right. After listening to a lot of thrash metal yesterday, I’m noticing that
the type and amount of distortion that the guitars have is very similar to a
lot of thrash metal. This is, therefore, only expanding their thrash metal
sound and influence even more. Except the way the different guitar parts are
layered is slightly more complex than your average thrash metal sound, which is
where the obvious complexity of death metal plays a part. But one of the things
that I end up enjoying the most about Strychnia is the vocals.
Death metal vocalists that have a large pitch range are hard
to come by these days. In response to that, some people might immediately point
to a lot of the deathcore vocalists that are big right now. Ok, many of those
are good vocalists, but normally, they do one of two things: they either only
do the polar opposites (deep gutturals and high-pitched screams) or stick to a
general range. This is true for death metal vocalists all across the spectrum,
whether it be tech death, brutal death, death metal, or melodic death. Just to
list of a couple examples, the vocalist for The Black Dahlia Murder is
fantastic, but 90% of the time, he does the same high-pitched shrieks,
occasionally doing some mid-ranged growls. The vocalist for Kataklysm and Ex
Deo rarely does anything beyond those vicious growls or those ear-splitting
screams. And of course, there are countless bands that only do one type of
vocal style. All of this is fine, and is often times more than appropriate for
the musical setting, but more than often, variety is what’s best. Bands like
Lamb of God, All Shall Perish, Cattle Decapitation, and Opeth all have
vocalists that do whatever they can to keep things as interesting as fucking
possible.
The vocalist for Strychnia performs vocal styles that go all
across the board. This tends to be typical for a lot of thrash death bands
because of the non-traditional sound of the music. DevilDriver, Gojira,
Hatesphere, and Revocation all have vocalists that, although some are better
than others, have the capability to perform a wide variety of pitches. The
first thing you hear out of the vocalist’s mouth after the intro track is a
high-pitched scream similar to that of All Shall Perish. Throughout the
duration of the album, you hear shrieks, mid-ranged growls and screams, nasty
yells, and some of the best growls that I’ve heard in years out of a brand new
band. On top of that, everything that the vocalist does shines with experience,
care, skill, and talent. This is what the biggest surprise to me has been, because
there are plenty of bands that, as a whole, are great, but individually, each
member seems to have a bunch of issues. I have a very, very hard time pointing
out issues within the individual members.
I’ve saved the issues that I have for last. The biggest
issue is that, although the band’s sound is extremely unique, I get the feel
that, as a whole, the album sounds like the same song, but dragged out. There
are cases (usually in traditional death metal) where this is perfectly fine,
but unfortunately, this isn’t one of them. When I listen to my favorite thrash
death or thrash black albums, I don’t feel that all of the songs blend together
into one big wall of awesome; I feel that each song is an individual block that
differs from all of the other “blocks” in the wall of awesome. All of the songs
have groove, they have slightly different structures, but they’re too similar.
To be honest, this is PERFECT, because this leaves room for improvement that
Strychnia can fix in later releases. Because a roadblock that some bands run
into is creating a flawless debut, therefore making it THAT much harder to
create a follow-up album that’s even better after setting the bar so damn high
with their debut. A great album will only create higher expectations and
standards for the next one. The Anatomy of Execution has set the bar up, but
not impossibly high.
One of the newer thrash death bands, Strychnia, is also one
of the best. This is the type of band that will be headlining tours three to
four albums down the road. This is a band that, although very young, not only
expresses extensive skill, practice, experience, and talent, also expresses
some of the highest potential I’ve ever heard out of a new band. I would
recommend this to metalheads that are looking for something, fresh, professional,
serious, and all-around fun to listen to. In other words, The Anatomy of
Execution gets my high score of 18/20.
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