Graveyard / Terrorist

Here’s another 7” split wax by Patrick of Iron Bonehead with another metal to the bone cover that gives a pretty good idea about what one should expect from this release.

Graveyard is a Spanish death metal band that sounds rather Swedish by playing death metal in the vein of the late '80s/early '90s chainsaw-like sounding albums like the cult Left Hand Path with crushing riffs, various tempo changes, and great guitar solos, but with a raw as hell sound instead of the great legendary Sunlight Studios production.

The idea of the music can be noticed from both the tracks “Howl of the Black Death” and “Ritual Live” and overall this band sounds promising, but it would probably sound even better if it was a bit more carefully produced (especially the 2nd song, which sounds like a very chaotic live recording even though the death metal madness that can be heard there does make the listener bang his head to this wall of sonic catastrophe). 6.5 / 10

On side B, the American Terrorist supply a dose of black thrash which sounds ugly, but pretty cool at the same time. The very basic drumming is what made me even think of "Transylvanian Hunger” and “Satanic Blood Angel”, and intense riffing in the vein of early Sodom and disgusting (in a good way) vocals remind me a bit of the band Inquisition, though here the vocalist actually screams and doesn't sound like he’s reading the ingredients written on a chocolate box.

Overall, Terrorist sound like good representatives of the genre they play, but their music lacks guitar solos except for some very short ones, which is quite a loss even though the riffs are cool. 6.9 / 10 for Terrorist, 6.7 and for the whole 7”.