Ashes of Babylon

SkyBurnsBlack have showcased a really diverse range of extreme metal and punk releases with Christian themes and lyrics. This offering from South Africa's Chaos Christ is one of their more decent releases, delivering some solid crust punk with a bit of thrash thrown in. I say 'a bit,' because this album is very much on the punk rather than the metal side of the fence. Obviously the moderators of this excellent site felt that there was sufficient metallic riffing to justify its inclusion here. Whatever, most of us metalheads love crust anyway.

The vocals are harsh, but they are not growls and they have a sneering quality that links back to the first wave of punk in the seventies. They even put on mock cockney accents. I suspect the band are big fans of The Exploited. The vocals are a little different on the final track, where they are much more distorted, the sort of vocals one would find in crustgrind. There are some samples thrown in, the sounds of screaming and wailing, an air raid siren, a tolling bell and a disturbing screeching sound at the beginning of 'Abort the Innocent.'

Being a Christian, I would have liked to read the lyrics to these songs, which you can't do with a digital album purchased off Bandcamp. 'Abort the Innocent' is clearly a pro-life assault on the topic of abortion. Some of the songs sound a little on the preachy side, perhaps and there is an awkward moment when the singer breaks out into exuberant praise to God.

The song 'Babylon' provides something of a climax for the album, adding considerable intensity, with its slow almost militaristic pace. 'Mosh AD' is also a stand out song, with its black metal like buzzsaw guitars. There is plenty of righteous fury on this album, and it is pretty blistering, but at times it suffers from a common problem in Christian metal of sounding just a little too cheerful. Some Christian bands, no matter how aggressive their style and genre, often seem to end up with a slightly and indefinable bouncy quality.

If you are a Christian who likes punk rock (or metal) you will probably like this a lot.