Review Summary: Some of the fastest, most brutalising death metal ever recorded
When it comes to Brodequin, you know what you're getting pretty much the second you see their ornate (one might even say haughty) logo situated beside some scene of medieval torture-- they're anything but the most dynamic of bands, and across the span of their three full length releases, they really only ever did gradations of the same general sound. Instruments of Torture, Methods of Execution, and the subject of this review, Festival of Death, were all produced with one aim in mind: to beat the ever loving *** out of the listener.
That they succeed in this endeavour is really not a matter of question: from the initial salvo of blast beats and feral growls that is opener Mazzatello right up to the final execution of Auto de Fe, the listener is subject to the musical (aural might be a more apt term) equivalent of aggravated battery, and the album at no point takes it upon itself to give any quarter. Hell, you can probably count on a single hand the number of occasions in which Festival of Death so much as deigns to relent even a little from the breakneck pace it maintains, urged onward by the harsh whip of the ruthless slave driver that is Chad Walls behind his drum kit. The drums, if anything, are probably the highlight of this record, and given the production clearly lends it precedence over the guitars and the bass, it's not a stretch to claim the ceaseless battering of the drums is what drives this album: Walls attacks his kit like it's Metallica's Lulu, alternating between M60-like blast beats, violent thrash beats, and pummeling bass drum patterns. The sheer speed of it is remarkable on a technical level, and that's not even taking into account the fills or the flashes of more complex, intricate patterns Walls sometimes throws in between the straightforward blasts and thrash beats.
Underneath the drums, buried somewhat in the production, lie the guitars-- and if you're not actively listening to Festival of Death and paying close attention to each constituent instrument, it's very easy to mistake the guitars for little more than a blur of grinding distortion. The bass, for what it's worth, really doesn't bother to make itself distinct from the guitars, opting instead to underscore the abrasive haze with its own added layer of low-end abuse. This can perhaps be somewhat forgiven in that bassist Jamie Bailey also lends his vocal chords to the record-- or what's left of them, which I don't imagine was a whole lot by the time he finished off his final guttural belch on Auto de Fe. The vocals are much like the album themselves, actually-- they're hardly dynamic, depending exclusively upon a vomitous growl to deliver the incomprehensible odes of agony and duress illustrated in the lyrics. Frankly, the dude sounds kinda like a leaf blower pitch shifted down to one foot in hell, which I mean in the best way possible. And sure, they're monotonous-- and they're also probably the second highest element in the mix, subordinate only to Chad Walls' brutalising onslaught-- but one gets the impression the vocals aren't meant to be zeroed in on as an independent force so much as they're intended to be taken as another facet of the battering quality Festival of Death manifests.
So we've firmly established that it's fast as *** and certainly relentless in its quest to pummel the listener into submission-- but if sheer aural violence determined a release's quality, bands like Anal Cunt and Sutcliffe Jügend would be widely regarded as the pinnacle of musical artistry. The question is, when all's said and done and Festival of Death has at last shown the listener's ears leniency as the hailstorm of Auto de Fe draws to a close... does any of it linger in the memory? Or is Festival of Death, perhaps, good for little more than scaring your neighbours at two in the morning?
Well, it'll definitely do a good job of that, and there's merit within the arguments of those who claim they can't hear a damn thing but 'RATATATATATATATATATA' and 'HURRHGHGHRH'-- I'm not about to pretend there isn't a whole lotta that goin' on here. Festival of Death asks only a little more attention and focus than the average metal album might, but those who afford it that luxury will find themselves extricating from the haze of battering brutality not only tangible riffs, but pretty memorable ones at that. Vivum Excoriari, a personal highlight of mine as far as this album goes, is an excellent showcase of this, touting grinding low-end chugs, high-octane riffing, and even melodic tapping sections, all of which will prove themselves lingering echoes of memorable brutality in the mind of the attentive listener. However, I can't say the production of the album helps it in any tangible fashion: one could argue that burying the guitars beneath layers of vocals and drums lends it more of a pounding quality, except that frankly, the show of brute force offered up by Chad Walls behind his kit really didn't need to be made more prominent than the guitars in order to be properly pummeling. All the consequent murkiness of the guitar tone really accomplishes is that it makes it difficult to fully disentangle riffs from the sludge, and it really doesn't do justice to the plethora of catchy exercises in breakneck brutality to be found on this album, if one is willing to delve beneath the assault of the drums and wade through the hazy production in order to find them. I can assure you that doing so is certainly worthwhile, and will vastly improve the listener's ability to fully appreciate Festival of Death for what it is-- a brutalising platter of skull-fracturing drums, ultra-guttural death growls, and punishing, memorable riffs.
