Review Summary: Did we miss the deeper message? Did we fail to engage? Hell no.
Just when Mitch Harris' status as a long-time Napalm Death member is becoming exceedingly unclear - their latest album still lists Harris on guitar and vocal duties, but even Barney himself seemed in limbo or hard-pressed to comment on his actual contribution to the band - out of the blue comes a pounding, grindy, but also melodically spiced up death 'n' roll offering called
Scarcity, a mere two weeks after the release of
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism.
Scarcity is the debut album of Brave The Cold, Mitch Harris' new musical project together with drummer Dirk Verbeuren (presently with Megadeth and Cadaver, among others). Spoiler alert:
Scarcity and Napalm Death's last are each other's equal in quality and fervour, and they should stand next to one another in your collection.
As to approach and style in general,
Scarcity seems to sit in between the catchiness of Carcass' last two full-lengths and the imprint of contemporary Napalm Death, which includes the full variety of influences ranging from punk and hardcore over thrash to death metal and beyond. With one notable difference, however. What sets this album apart is the extra melodic dimension added by the judicious use of polyphonic clean vocals. Ranging from baritone ritual chanting to almost angelic choral harmonies, these vocal parts, combined with an instrumentation that otherwise breathes pure aggression and menace, do an excellent job in co-creating the dystopian and apocalyptic atmosphere of the album, with its themes of alienation, dehumanization, cybernetics and artificial intelligence, global control and annihilation.
If this - on first sight - comes across as a move of reckless modernism, rest assured: the arrangement of clean vs. extreme really works and is dosed and balanced exactly right, resulting in added value for each track where it is employed. While the background choral drone in the ferocious opener 'Blind Eye' already hints at this mixing of styles, it is not until 'Hallmark of Tyranny' and the subsequent tracks that the melodic potential of Harris' song writing on
Scarcity unfolds more fully. The clean vocals in the interludes and bridge sections of these tracks may easily catch you off guard the first time you hear them. But because they fit so surprisingly well with their contrasting aggressive surroundings, you just as readily embrace them. (At least I did.) In 'Monotheist', the clean vocal layer works to add driving force to an already irresistible headbanger. Even the most experimental – and Voivodesque, yes! - track 'Retrograde' retains sufficient levels of anger to keep any grind and death fan focused while the melodic vocal lines settle into the ear, only to stick indefinitely. Addictive, doomy liturgical chants nestle in the merciless biotopes of 'Dead Feed' and 'Upheaval', interacting seamlessly with heavy-as-hell riffing and pummelling rhythms. In the frantic 'Refuge', the harmonic multivocal cleans do nothing less than create sheer beauty.
Those still sceptical as to the extreme metal potential of the album will have their minds set at ease by uncompromising and undiluted hardcore tracks devoid of any cleans such as 'Apparatus', 'Necromatrix', 'Shallow Depth', and 'Shame and Ridicule'. It is on tracks like these that Dirk Verbeuren's brutal drumming skills shine through in all their technical glory. (Some of the fills on 'Shame and Ridicule' are almost uncanny.) Harris' riffing is on point and tight as a rat's b*tthole throughout. The distortion is deadly. In the brutal vox department, here as well as elsewhere on the album, Harris devotes ample attention to layering and combining a fair range of harsh shrieks, malignant snarls, coarse growls, and death grunts. Even considered solely from its metal side,
Scarcity has plenty of hooks, twists, and tempo switches to keep all tracks interesting. Together with the added polyphonic overtones, this has definitely become a catchy record that stands out. Then again, an action span of 38 minutes for no less than 11 songs further reduces the risk of boredom to a minimum. Overall production is dense but crisp, courtesy of Logan Nader.
On a final note, listeners familiar with Menace's 2014 album
Impact Velocity will know that this is not Mitch Harris' first experiment in combining and contrasting extreme and clean styles. It is a polyphonic formula much similar to the one that proved effective in shaping the industrial-progressive soundscape of
Impact Velocity, that we now are lucky enough to see transposed and incorporated in the fresh and aggressive grind 'n' roll package that is
Scarcity.
Brave The Cold is:
• Mitch Harris: guitars, bass, vocals
• Dirk Verbeuren: drums
