Flayed Alive

How important can a sample be in a song? We’ve all listened to those filthy grindcore albums that start every song with another snippet of aural depravity, but Flayed Alive by Iron Front opens with one of the most impactful examples I can think of. An old-fashioned voice describes unfolding events around some kind of unknown presence, telling us as an object starts to emit light then creatures before the recording cuts off to be replaced by the sound of something alien, then - boom - as death metal strikes with a thick guitar tone and then the band’s weight on the second repetition. The song is even named ‘Extraterrestrial’, that’s how much the sample shapes the experience, with the quintet only needing to hold the tension with eerie melodies and a balance of brutal and accessible parts.

The 3 other songs on this EP can’t all make such a strong impression as the opener, yet a few other extremely well-judged moments stuck with me from my first listen. Namely, the flattening bridge riff of the title track, the huge dirty guitar tone on ‘Black Seas of Infinity’ that adds copious menace and power, plus a few choice yells and howls from Topey Plourde, who has a cavernous bellow. These moments mesh together over OSDM values combined with imposing modern production, meaning that Iron Front can smack the listener into submission and remain unpredictable too. ‘Corpse Disposal’ displays the rhythm players doing a lot of the work, marking even the plainest song of the bunch with pleasing grooves and some memorable transitions where the heft of downtuned strings crunches and squelches together. As a rule, this kind of West Coast death metal does little for me until I get to the solos, but Flayed Alive satisfies me plenty even with a few brief lead guitar moments. A very strong 17 minutes of crushing exhilaration released on my 30th birthday.