Prayers upon Deaf Ears

Hindsight is 20/20. I worshiped "Prayers Upon Deaf Ears" when it came out, playing it constantly. This little EP seemed to have everything I wanted at the time. It sounded like Slayer, had vicious breakdowns and an interesting, ultra-righteous message. The band were enigmatic too, there were no band photos in the inlay, just a bunch of grisly photos of animals suffering various forms of cruelty. This band were confrontational and vociferous about animal rights and I presume they took their band name from the animal liberation zine. I've never been vegan, but records like this forced me to think twice about eating meat, and to think more about where meat came from.

Musically and lyrically, Arkangel were building on what American bands like Earth Crisis and Abnegation had done a couple of years earlier. Weirdly, Belgium was the European epicentre for metalcore during the latter half of the 1990s. Arkangel hailed from Brussels instead of the more famous ‘H8000’ scene (from Flanders). The two scenes have different regional flavour although you can travel from one place to another in about an hour, since Belgium is small and has good transport links. Arkangel had none of the Ringworm-esque punk that inspired Flanders bands like Congress and Liar. Arkangel were groovier, more evil, more dance-able, with more breakdowns and tons of Slayer riffs. This was perfect music for ultra-violent moshing and for spreading righteous animal rights messaging.

Unfortunately, most of what once appealed to me about Arkangel I now find off-putting. The main problem is the riffing. It works on a surface, moshpit level, but there is no variety or depth. Almost every riff is a twiddly evil Slayer riff. Every song moves through a series of these types of riffs before ending. All of these riffs sound good on their own, but there isn’t any punk speed or aggression to root these songs to the ground. Arkangel’s approach to composition is novel and would influence many other bands, but it lacks real power or momentum. There are none of those hard, solid thrash or punk beats. The drum patterns reflect what the guitar is doing, lots of dashing fills, not enough simple, solid bashing. The result is six songs that sound mushy and flaccid. Yes, it sounds evil, but there is little else to get excited about.

A record like “Prayers Upon Deaf Ears” makes you realise how important punk is to hardcore. No matter how evil and metallic the genre gets, it needs some punk stirred in. Other Belgian metalcore bands like Congress had this punkish element, so records like “Blackened Persistance” and “The Other Cheek” work much better than this one. Over in America, other metalcore bands solved this problem by adopting death metal extremity (e.g., Day of Suffering and Upheaval). Arkangel weren’t heavy or complex enough to pass as death metal, and weren’t punk enough to sound like hardcore. Interestingly, they would also tone down their animal rights messaging after this EP, and become more of a ‘moshy’ metalcore band. I fell out of love with this record a long time ago (but it is still my favourite Arkangel release).