California’s Brain
Drill have unleashed their first full-length album, “Apocalyptic
Feasting”, and after many spins, I’m still trying to recover.
Part of what appears to be a recent surge of hyper-tempo’ed tech death
metal, Brain Drill lay it all out on the table and dare you to dine on their
razor blade-infested recipe. Kind of a new-school descendant of Brutal Truth’s
classic “Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses”, “Apocalyptic
Feasting” is chock full of barely comprehensible, lightning-fast tracks
that bring new meaning to the word excess. The “hyper-blast beat”
is regularly utilized by death metal drummer extraordinaire Marco Pitruzzella
(Vital Remains, The Faceless) and it is he who keeps the train on the tracks
(barely) through selections like the spine-shredding title track, and the
almost epic “Revelation”. Guitarist Dylan Ruskin and bassist
Jeff Hughell provide the musical fireworks, as they shove more twists and
turns into one 3-minute track than most could do in seven. Steve Rathjen’s
growl/scream attack is adequate and appropriately crushing at times.
But details aside, is this thing actually any good? I’m glad to say
yes, but for me, only in small doses. Strangely, Apocalyptic’s flaws
might also be its greatest achievement. There is literally so much going
on, that you might get motion sickness trying to aurally decipher just what
the hell you just heard, but I think it’s music worth being assaulted
for. The album’s closer, “Sadistic Abductive” pretty much
sum this disc up as it comes off like an asteroid hitting a densely populated
planet at a trillion miles an hour. This my friends, is a death metal circus
act, something that needs to be heard just to experience the sheer feat
that this band has pulled off.
Rating: 80
Reviewed By: Bova |
