Blood Red Throne - Union Of Flesh And Machine - review
Blood Red Throne - Union Of Flesh And Machine - review
Tracklist
01. Revocation Of Humankind02. Proselyte Virus
03. Patriotic Hatred
04. Homicidal Ecstacy
05. Martyrized
06. Union Of Flesh And Machine
07. Legacy Of Greed
08. Exposed Mutation
09. Primal Recoil
10. Leather Rebel [Judas Priest cover]
11. Mary Whispers Of Death
A review by
ScreamingSteelUS October 20, 2016
Blood Red Throne reminds me a lot of Dew-Scented, a personal favorite and one of the standards by which I tend to measure death and death/thrash: the idea behind a song comes secondary to the brutality with which that song can be played. Also, this kind of sounds like Dew-Scented, so there's that. Union Of Flesh And Machine does produce some interesting riff ideas, but this album unquestioningly prizes sound over substance. What a powerful sound it is, though - only the most Swedish of guitar tones, utterly guttural growls, and a lethal precision that makes Union Of Flesh And Machine feel exactly like what the title describes. Everything about Union Of Flesh And Machine is rapid-fire, calculated, and precise. The riffs jump back and forth between winding, organic passages and blocky, crushing heaps of distortion; every song bristles with furious energy that makes the album a roaring freight train.
This is the kind of thing I love to come back to after a stressful day. You don't need to waste any time in contemplation or analysis to determine the goal of the album; it's just an unstoppable wall of sound, a brutal, mechanical onslaught of harsh tones, sharp licks, and barreling battalions of battery. Maybe you won't remember any of these songs five minutes after you've moved on to the next album (although "Martyrized" and "Patriotic Hatred" in particular are pretty badass), but who cares? Melodies are for the weak. Death metal deals in pain. All a riff has to do is carry you to the morgue and back. It doesn't have to take you to dinner or bake you cookies or give you anything to sing along to.
Union Of Flesh And Machine definitely has enough new ideas to make it interesting the first time around, but at its heart, this album doesn't venture beyond a particular kind of death metal that we've all heard many times before. For the most part, the songs kind of run in and out of each other. I don't hold this quality against the album at all, since as far as pure atmosphere goes, Union is a powerful and dominating presence that I'd be perfectly happy listening to over and over again, and that quality is worth a lot of points. Union may be basically just death metal, but that was never a bad thing.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 9 |
| Songwriting: | 7 |
| Originality: | 7 |
| Production: | 8 |
Written on 20.10.2016 by
Written on 20.10.2016 by
Dull Music for Dull People Comments
Comments:
6
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DUDE. YOU CRACK ME UP  but who cares? Melodies are for the weak. Death metal deals in pain. All a riff has to do is carry you to the morgue and back. It doesn't have to take you to dinner or bake you cookies or give you anything to sing along to.
---- "A life all mine Is what I choose At the end of my days" --The Gathering "A Life All Mine" from Souvenirs
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Posts: 66
I'm about halfway through the album and I gotta say your review is spot on. Nothing ground breaking or revolutionary here but definitely a fun, enjoyable listen. A good album to kick off the day first thing in the morning.
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Posts: 7902 Written by Coconut Racecar on 20.10.2016 at 09:10 Then again, slam and goregrind doesn't get much castigation. I don't think many fans gives a shit about pulling off unnecessarily weak links out of goregrind albums as majority listens for "fun play". The only areas where most of slam and goregrinds records been targeted is of comparisons, frequent question mark over monopolistic songwriting and musical structure, drumming and even filtering too much of "groove" into it. Other than that, nothing much could be found in it.
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Posts: 6696 Written by Susan on 20.10.2016 at 02:37 
---- "Earth is small and I hate it" - Lum Invader I'm the Agent of Steel.
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Posts: 4367
Nice fun review.  Never heard Dew-scented though but I love BRT including their last album. They are grinding and groovy fun death metal. Think I wasn't tracking this. So definitely will give this a listen soon.
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