Apocalypsenow

When a relatively well known Brazilian death metal band like Antidemon releases a new album, everybody knows what to expect. Everyone anticipates fast, aggressive, raw and dirty metal. And we're never wrong. The only real question is, "how good are the riffs?"

Apocalypsenow wastes absolutely no time in getting around to showing you what's in store. The title track rips straight in; no ambiance, no intro, just straight up tremolo, rapid drumming and growls. Once you get over the shock of such an intense intro they tone back the tempo a little to give room for some atmosphere. It didn't take me long to figure out that they really knew what they were doing while composing this beast. The songs regularly shift with ease from rapid blast beats, to atmospheric chord progressions or to catchy, palm muted lead lines and back.

While the individual songs didn't survive well with repetitive re-listening, the album as a whole is extremely easy to listen through from start to end. Due to the fast, aggressive nature of the music, the songs tend to have a seamless quality to them and blended together very well with each other. Despite all of that though, some songs really do manage to stand out above the others.

Welcome to Death certainly fits that criteria. With a tenacious and catching energy it grabs you and pulls you into the dirty and heavy brutality that makes you feel the need to throw your hair around in the headbanger's salute.

One of the really intensive things about this release is it's upfront honesty. It's death metal served up with no excuses, hidden agendas or sacrifice for the sound. As a metal elitist, I've listened to hundreds of bands from all metal sub-genres, and the more I listened to the harder it became for me to decide what defines the stereotypical metal sound. This album pretty quickly brought me back to earth on that issue. This release is straight up metal from the riffs, to the atmosphere, lyrics and aesthetics.

The artwork on the disk and sleeves was in no way impressive. Black, red, grey, demons, chains and band portraits. Antidemon seemed to have taken a page from Mortification's "Scribe of the Pentateuch" booklet (no pun intended), as the the lyrics fold out into a mini band poster. However, this isn't the sort of album that really needs amazing album art. It's all part of that up front, honest metal I was talking about earlier.

I won't say this album blew me away, as it wasn't something that hasn't already been done before. That in itself is one of the limitations of Brazilian, grind influenced death metal. However, it was good. Very good. This was an extremely brutal album that is well worth it's price. I would definitely recommend this release to anyone looking for raw, heavy death metal.