The War at the Edge of Existence

Man am I glad I found this. The first of hopefully many releases from this one woman slam band. As a musician myself I have a massive amount of respect for anyone who has the drive to wear all the hats entailed in writing and recording and this young lady does an excellent job at all of them. Those of you thinking that this is a gimmick or that gender would hamper the quality are sorely mistaken. This girl is good, and though this project is young it already destroys much of what the genre has to offer.

And how does it do this? Easy. The damn thing is MEMORABLE above all else. On top of that she has two massive strengths. One. She knows how to write a strong riff, and just about every one on this recording falls into that category. There’s nothing overly technical about them, they are somewhat primitive in the best possible way, and they are just crushing and catchy at the same time, a nice balance. I love a guitarist that knows you don’t have to cram a thousand notes into a riff to make it a good one. The rest of the music built around these riffs rumbles along for the most for the most at a mid-paced chug that makes me think of a group of tanks rolling across a battlefield, probably not too far from what Bolt Thrower would sound like if they were a slam band. This is broken up by a few faster parts and some short spacey melodic sections that do a great job of keeping the music from becoming monotonous or one dimensional.

The second major strength, and what really put this thing over the top for me was the vocals. She reminds me of Antti Boman from Demilich. That strange guttural gurgle he had was so far ahead of it’s time, and she really has that down, at least to these ears. Anyone that sounds like Antti gets an immediate pass to my list of top death metal vocalists. Her tone is clear and strong throughout, she has good vocal patterns, and she doesn’t sound like a pig getting its ass kicked. Just awesome. My favorite part of this band for sure.

The bass guitar and drum programming are both competent and well performed, and it will be good to see them get even better in the future. They do get overshadowed a little by the other half of the recording but that’s more do to how great that other half is. It is hard to pick a stand out track here as it is just solid from start to finish and the songs are short, but if I had to choose highlights I would pick the title track because it is a good representation of the whole sound of the album, and The Coming, which makes great use of the aforementioned melodies while the atmosphere and sick vocals keep the song from being any less brutal than the rest of them.

I really like the recording itself. It has a nice old school edge to it and the guitars have a nice raw sound to them instead of being scooped to fuck. The playing is tight but the rawness of the recording gives it this ever so slight loose feel to it that really adds to the sound and helps it stand apart from so many bands in this style. She does a great job here as well.

Complaints? None, really. This is very short, and some might not consider this an album, but even though the running time is not long to me this feels like a complete album. One could argue for longer songs and this may happen naturally as the style of the project matures, but for what this is I really enjoy these short stabs of brutality. I take the ten percent off more because there is still room to grow here than for any weakness in what is on display here.

This is more than worth your time. Get this now.