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Fatality - Metal As Hell! Chapter: I review



Reviewer:
7.0

1 user:
6
Band: Fatality
Album: Metal As Hell! Chapter: I
Release date: 2008


01. Terminal Agression
02. Bring Back The Days (Of Metal)
03. Almost Broke
04. Gritface
05. Shock Treatment
06. It's Devil's Night
07. Metal As Hell!
08. Are You Ready To Rock? [bonus]

Fatality is a band with a mission. As they put it on their homepage Fatality is: "Breaking out from hell, they have been slowly taking over the world ever since with the sole purpose of being this genres last best hope to 'Bring Back The Days Of Metal'."

Of course metal has always been a style in which its bands swing around a lot of big statements and most of the time I can only smirk about them. Same thing here, apart from that I haven't noticed yet that metal is dead (perhaps it is in Northern Ireland, but globally seen the genre is obviously alive and kicking), I can't agree with Fatality being one of the most intense and powerful bands in the universe either, which is what they lay claim to on their homepage.

Now on to the actual CD; the promo sheet I received tells me that this self-produced demo with 8 songs and a length of 38 minutes features a whopping 116 riffs and 27 guitar solos. Let's break these numbers down a little bit. This means that the songs have an average of 14.5 separate riffs and 3.375 solos, to break the numbers down even more; this means 3 riffs a minute (or one riff every 20 seconds) in addition to one solo every 1.4 minutes (84 seconds).

A big statement, again, but this time I think the band actually lives up to it. I didn't count along of course, but I can tell you that Fatality have a lot going on in their music! Stylistically this is classic thrash metal. Nothing new, but quite technical and high quality guitar work. Production wise it sounds like it could have been released in the eighties when this music was really thrashing about as well. The atmosphere as a whole really benefits from this production, yet the drumming suffers from it, a shame really, it could have done with some extra oomph.

Another down point is in the vocal department. Tom Morrison, who handles it along with being one of the two guitarists, should rather stick with the picking in my opinion, as that's where he really shines. His voice sounds like there's something missing for this kind of music, if it were just a bit rougher or more aggressive it would have been a perfect fit, but alas it isn't. Further due to the band having so much going on but always only for a short while, there are hardly any riffs that stick. They're good when you listen to them, but after the CD is done and you try to recall anything you just heard that's where it starts getting difficult.

If you're into oldschool thrash metal and you really enjoy fast and constantly-changing riffing then this album is pretty much a must-hear for you. This is not a masterpiece, but if you like the music it's a good release, definitely worth checking out.


Rating breakdown
Performance: 8
Songwriting: 7
Originality: 6
Production: 7

Written by Bas | 25.01.2009




Comments

Comments: 3   Visited by: 70 users
25.01.2009 - 16:18
Valentin B
Iconoclast
Lol, i saw the title of the album and KNEW that this was pretentious, lol. well i always appreciate a good old fashioned 80's style thrashing

btw is this similar to Dark (Fucking) Angel's Darkness Descends?
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25.01.2009 - 18:26
Thryce
Retired Staff
Checked them out. As you said, nothing spearheading yet to some extent still pretty enjoyable stuff. These are the kind of bands which are fun to listen to for ten minutes, just for the kicks.

If there ever will be a Chapter: II, I hope they can pull off something more convincing.
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Your favorite band sucks.
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25.01.2009 - 18:38
Rating: 6
Bas
Retired Staff
Written by Thryce on 25.01.2009 at 18:26

If there ever will be a Chapter: II, I hope they can pull off something more convincing.

"they already have an entire collection of song demos and concept for another release which are much more experimental with some acoustic interludes, piano, harmonica and better catchy vocal lines but still keeping the agressive riffing, their songwriting is much more advanced now and they would like a label to help release "isolate the world"."

of course this might be big words again, but might be good too! we'll see
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BAS - Beautifully Accented Sexiness
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