Chronicles of a Sickness

This split has not gotten the publicity or exposure it deserves. 7th Nemesis is the stronger of the two bands I would say, Punishment being the other. The four songs by 7th Nemesis that start this album off are absolutely unrelenting brutality pieces, my vote for the best being "Conjuration of Blades," the second track; this is one brutal fucking song. The guitar tone is produced to sound HUGE and it packs a lethal dose. The song is charachterized by intense tempo changes, and truly vicious slamming sections, followd by blast beats that can peel paint. The drums are out front in the mix, and that complements the super-heavy guitar and bass rhythms. The vocals are varied from Grave-like screams to lower growling, which I think sound the best. All the 7th Nemesis songs are very strong, characterized by devastatingly heavy guitar tone, and time changes from slower grooves to hyper-fast, pulverizing grinding speed. The fourth track, 7th Nemesis' last, is "Blood Drps in Heaven" and is easily one of the more original death metal songs I've heard. There is a long clean guitar intro that actually sound like a nylon string acoustic! The whole beginning of the song has clean vocals and guitar, with a Carribean feel, but one can sense the power growing as the tempo slowly gets faster then breaks loose and gets brutal. 7th Nemesis are definately a very original band, I don't know why some people characterize them as average.
Punishment has the last five songs, and to me their sound is much more along the lines of generic sounding death, although it is very crushing and brutal. Their trademark sound is evident on every song, and although their vocalist is great, that cannot save them from inferior songwriting abilities. All their songs have the same pattern of going from slow intros to faster blasts, with very little interesting song structures. In my opinion, 7th Nemesis own this split, with a different style of song writing on each of their 4 tracks. I'd say get this split for the 7th Nemesis tracks, and leave it on for the Punishment.

Ah, the sweet, sweet stench of brutality, nothing quite like it, I say. Sure the sound can be tired at times, but where else does one turn when looking for something that will just beat the living shit out of you with a mindless assault of blasting, grinding, growling, and belching? Well if you've run out of places to get your brutal metal fix, then be sure to check out this nifty little split from French label, Skull Fucked Records. Featuring French death metallers 7th Nemesis, who I've reviewed before, and Austria's Punishment, Chronicles of a Sickness, serves up an adequate helping of chunky death metal goodness.

Of course, nothing presented on this disc is required listening, but both bands serve their purpose. 7th Nemesis contribute the first four tracks of soundly executed guttural death metal. Fast paced and punishing, this is pretty standard brutal death metal, but it does the trick. I can't say that I'll be putting this on repeat very often, but it's going on the iPod for those days when I just need generic brutality.

The final five tracks come courtesy of Punishment; now this is brutal, but it's slightly different, there's some more thrash going on here, and it's pretty damn raw. It's not raw like Autopsy, but it's got a definite lack of polish and that is a good thing. Hailing from Austria, these guys certainly know how to riff and their half of the split is just different enough to make the split work.

So if you want to check out two up and coming Euro-death metal bands keep an eye out for this, it won't bulldoze you into the ground, but it just might cause some wanted discomfort.

Originally published @ www.metaljudgment.com (c) 2004