Burn After Reaping

This album is the band's sophomore release and by god it's a huge improvement from the last album. The production quality is obviously much better, near perfection, and the band seems to have found a perfect hold on how to make brutal death metal. This album definitely appeals to all kinds of metal heads. The band is classified as death metal and rightly so, but some songs, such as Deatholution, Kingdom of Thoughts, and Finger On the Trigger, contain an element of melody and groovieness.

The vocalist can growl deep as hell, scream like a pterodactyl and everything in between. Their are no clean vocals whatsoever but the songs never go over the top with brutality. The sound is something that appeals to fans of In Flames or Cannibal Corpse alike.

The music is very catchy. The drums have periods of quick bursts but all in a easy-to-follow way along with some blast beats and moments where he just beats the hell out of the drums to keep a fast pace. The guitar is very catchy and uses several different distortions to create an interesting sound. Guitar solos however, are few and far between, and not all too great. Other than on the song Deatholution, the bass is not very recognizable, but this doesn't do much to hamper the sound the band produces.

To sum it up... Burn After Reaping is a brutal sounding album dominated by low death growls but with some screeches thrown in as well. The lyrical themes can be kind of ridiculous as you can see just from looking at the song titles, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This album also contains some groovy and melodic tones to it though, which is seen mostly in the guitar work.

Definitely a great album for all metal heads to pick up. To get a sense of how good the band can sound start with the songs I've mentioned throughout the review. Hackneyed can definitely be considered a more progressive offshoot of bands such as Suffocation and other brutal German bands, and they will probably be a spearhead to introduce bands such as Suffocation to those that don't necessarily listen to much brutal death metal.

Hackneyed is a young German death metal band who released their debut Death Prevails on Nuclear Blast last year. I completely missed that album, but here they are with the follow-up. Burn After Reaping is a groove oriented album, with both USDM and thrash influences, but it's fairly brutal and executed with competence. Though there are numerous generic chugging bits on the album, these are almost always used with some interesting results, a couple of off notes thrown here or there. This is far from a perfect release, but it is refreshing and energetic all the same.

The intro "Burn" is just some drumming, a few chugs and grunts, but the album really begins with "Finger on the Trigger", a bruiser with some Cannibal Corpse-like rhythms. Though the verse is pretty dull, the chorus breakdowns use some more interesting riffing, almost like a slow thrash. "Deatholution" features more of those double bass grooves interspersed with a good selection of chords for the pre-chorus. "Weed Flavoured Meat" has a thrashing bite to it with more of those Cannibal Corpse guitar fills that this band truly loves. There are 14 tracks on this album, so I'll just point out a few of the choice cuts: "Kingdom of Thoughts" is a dense melodic death metal track which uses a familiar but non-failing, climbing rhythm. "Home Meat Home" is just fucking sick, and I wish the rest of the album had lived up to this. Beefed up, aggressive death metal with thrashing hooks not unlike something from Heartwork, and of course...the breakdown. "Last Man on Earth" has some sweet slower riffs, and I like the vocal sample.

Burn After Reaping sounds very professional; it is, after all, a Nuclear Blast release. Since this is a young band, I hope the label puts some money into their investment because these guys definitely have loads of potential to arise as a figurehead for the rapidly expanding German death scene. I wasn't as impressed with this as Decapitated's Winds of Creation, but that's a tall order for a younger band. Hackneyed is worth checking out if you like riffy, well-composed death metal that doesn't eschew the pit parts for all the inevitable meatheads they will encounter at shows.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com