European Annihilation

And once again the reviewers of metal archives have steered me completely wrong. How the hell does this one sit around with a measly 20%?

I've liked Diocletian for quite some time. But while most of the vital parts are usually there - great riffs, effective song structures, bad attitude and just general chaos and ferociousness - the sound of their albums tend to be a bit on the thinner side, which is probably the reason that i will usually go for Witchrist's Beheaded Ouroboros instead. It's a real shame, since the material itself usually seems superb. The above, however, is not a problem with this unbelievably downtuned, vile, sludgy, irradiated piece of filth.

When I first put it on I was actually a bit shocked. When you put on a record from one of these NZ bands, you're prepared for high intensity... But this is a notch above what I was expecting. The sound of this release is just a wall of mauling blunt force trauma, definitely more bass heavy than any war metal I've ever heard. And while war metal is just a label, i do think it is sometimes fitting. My personal feelings on the term is that war in this context doesn't really mean nations against other nations, soldiers on a battlefield, etc... What good war metal in it's audial essence feels like is the sheer obliterating devastation of a thermonuclear shockwave. The war in war metal is a war where very few victors are left standing. If any. And this release is as fine an example of this feeling as you're likely to find.

I truly do love death metal, but as a whole it often has an unfortunate tendency towards staleness, which ruins a lot of potentially great bands and albums for me. I've often felt over the years that this or that release would have done well with a good crust punk kick in the teeth to really get the blood boiling, so it's great to see two covers of two great songs from two great crust bands on this EP. Not to mention the crusty attitude of Diocletian themselves. The covers are actually really well done, but that being said i usually skip them anyway. They just can't contend with the reckless breakneck steel storm of Diocletian's own material. The two songs they've got on here are also on Doom Cult, but i honestly didn't recognize them at first, that's how different they sound here. What they sound like on this release is cities reduced to shapeless rubble, empires crumbling into dust, worlds disintegrating into nothingness. Utter and total devastation. Just lovely.

If Doom Cult had sounded like this EP, it would probably have been one of my most played albums. Don't get me wrong, it's still fucking great. But as it is, it's this EP I keep coming back to. And i often find myself playing these two tracks over and over again. Which must seem ridiculous to my neighbors. But i just can't find anything that matches the high voltage meat grinding demolishment of these tracks at the moment. And it's not for lack of trying over the past few months i ensure you... So fuck coffee, this is what you really need in the morning.