review: Come Back from the Dead

Come Back from the Dead

The Rise of the Blind Ones

Transcending Obscurity Records

September 13th, 2019

Tradition says that what is today known as Galicia, the region in northwestern Spain, was of particular interest to the Roman warlords due to the wealth to be found there in metal, apparently gold. The Roman rulers were war makers that built and kept intact an empire through brutality, violence (they liked crucifying dissidents, for instance), and commerce, as has been the case throughout the history of empires. Tradition also says that the Roman warlord dictator Julius Caesar and his army made their way to A Coruña, located in Galicia, Spain, because they were searching for trade in metal. What would Caesar think of the brutality and metal that two thousand years later is coming out of A Coruña in the form of Come Back from the Dead? It is not shiny gold but more like moldy, rusty old iron covered in cobwebs and overgrown vegetation around it. People in this band seem highly motivated to lay down their own law of death metal. They shall not domesticate nor gentrify the old spirit. They shall not water down the old spirit by using melodies. They shall remain steadfast in their allegiance to the inspiration that drove them to bring back to life the 1980s brutal old death metal.

The vocals are something like a shout-growl, not the low, grumbled type. These shouts are harsh and aggressive, the way that death and grind bands were growling in the 1980s on those basement and garage demos, rehearsal cassette tapes and unreleased recordings and albums. The growling is somewhat comprehensible, and fans of the genre may find it refreshing to have the feeling that they understand quite a bit of the words. Musically, what is really important is the grooves and the beat; it’s atavistic and full of the fun of raging, ranting, raving and screaming. Why do people listen to this music? They listen because they want simple, brutal old-school death metal. They want things to be direct, and they want death metal with a fun, grooving style. You don’t need your music theory textbooks for this album. You need a little bit of hate in your life, a bit of anger, a bit of horror movies, and a maniacal passion for old-school cave-dwelling brute ogre death.

comebackfromthedead.bandcamp.com