Thursday, June 13, 2013

metal by metal-obsessed: Besieged (Canada) and Dead Awaken (Sweden)

Besieged (Canada): "Victims beyond All Help"
Dead Awaken (Sweden): "Where Hope Turns Dripping Red"
I told you, in the previous two reviews (Attic and Potential Threat SF), about two bands that clearly love metal music and that represent certain traditions in metal.
Well, today that theme continues. Dead Awaken (Sweden) is death metal and Besieged (Canada) plays thrash.
Besieged is instant gratification, bam, wham, get-in-the-pit and slam. The way that Besieged plays, I appreciate their dedication to no-nonsense.
Besieged is some 31 minutes of compact, low-fat, sharp and shredding thrash. Besieged wastes no time. In that sense, Besieged convinced me with the first song "Internal Suffering" and I listen to the rest of the songs, for a continuous campaign of piling tight thrash riffs right on top of each other until the album ends.
Now, here's the thing that I want to tell you about. In my opinion, Besieged loves, loves, loves Sepultura's "Beneath the Remains" (and probably also "Schizophrenia," as well as "Arise").
I say that in a positive way.
Here are the details. The vocals sound like Max, and the riffing and guitar tone sounds like Andreas, as well as the soloing; the drumming, the tightness of it, sounds like Igor.
Also, not least: the way the songs are arranged I find a lot of it sounds like songs from "Beneath the Remains." The structure, vocal phrasing sounds a whole a lot like songs like "Inner Self," so on and so forth.
If the idea of a "baby Sepultura" just bothers you, then don't bother with this.
This is a good album, and clearly the band needed to get this out of their system. Here's hoping they continue the shredding, as they find their own way in their metal trajectory.
Even though Dead Awaken plays war-themed death metal (old-school, no-funny-business death metal), the same things apply in this sense:
Dead Awaken are death metal zealots and clearly, early 90s death metal is what they love. Now, Dead Awaken wraps up classic death metal in their songs, but I don't find that they sound a bit like a tribute band to any one band in particular.
Basically, if you listen to a lot of death metal daily because you love the heavy riffing and growling, then Dead Awaken is just the sort of "meat and potatoes" ("soyrizo and potatoes," if you are vegetarian) style you will enjoy.
Don't waste your time with "they are not original" sarcastic/negative comments because this is for death metal love-it-alls. Bang your head, that's it. They have the songs and they have the attitude for it. That's not bad, not bad at all.
www.facebook.com/Besiegedthrash?filter=1 www.dead-awaken.com

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