Crush Us with Fire

Due to a “Trench Warfare”, “The Beast” is going to “Crush Us with Fire”. You better “Submit to Death” in this “Burning Inferno of Death”. Anyway, you will see your “Ashes from a Past Life” very soon.

Those who are not put off in view of the song titles that have fed the first paragraph – I must tell you that things don’t get better when it comes to the material of “Crush Us with Fire”. Suicidal Winds perform a pretty raw and furious form of black / thrash / death metal. A technical component does not play a big role, only with regard to the high velocity that surely demands very solid manual skills. That’s okay so far, restlessness and ferocity are always welcome. But these elements need to be combined with clever song-writing and this is exactly the point where the problems of these Swedes begin.

Naturally, the whole systems fails when the songs do not have the necessary degree of quality. Here the riffs lack catchiness, the single parts do not blend seamlessly with each other and breaks rather tear the songs apart instead of giving them an exciting structure. Everything has to stand behind the creation of the highest possible level of brutality and generally speaking, this is not a promising approach. “Crush Us with Fire” clears your head violently and readjust your coordinates, but I doubt that this alone makes things better. Fact is that no song keeps sticking in the ear and this applies for the new studio songs, the cover version and the live track. In view of this result, the adequate production cannot save the EP from falling through the net.

In short, “Crush Us with Fire” is much weaker than the full-lengths of the Swedish wrecking bars. Suicidal Winds do not do everything wrong, but a coherent impression does not show up. The usual tools like the roughshod vocals are present and none of them alone causes headaches, but the compositions just do not work the way they should. “Trying to crush us with pure noise” would have been a more fitting title for this release.

Playing black/thrash it’s not so simple…you must have the perfect dose of rawness and brutality along with an evil touch to make it even more bad-ass. Suicidal Winds I believe they’ve got these characteristics, so you can enjoy this small, evil EP. The opener takes no prisoner with Marduk oriented guitar distortion, screamed vocals and a drumming that is never on complete blast beats, preferring a kind of faster up tempo.

The production is good with an old fashioned touch, so very good for a genre that shouldn't never have a too clear production. “The Beast” is even faster after a small intro. Here they remind me early Angelcorpse too for the guitars parts and the drummer’s way of playing. Some lead guitar lines are actually very good during the more mid-paced parts because they keep all the sounds together without making them being boring or less evil.

The beginning riff on “Trench Warfare” has a really good thrash influence while the rest of the song can be easily defined as “war black metal” with a good solo. The semi blast beats on “Burning Inferno Of Death” are really out of the blue. This song also features a more melodic solo and a more screamed chorus. “Submit To Death” is a good Grotesque cover that played this way is even more obscure than the original one.

The live song “Ashes From A Past Life” is the last song for this good EP that doesn’t invent anything in this genre but if you want a professional work, full of violence and evilness, take it and it will not let you down.