Labels: Gravity Entertainment
Review by: Alex Deller
Name yourself after a mass murderer you’re automatically bringing the likes of Starkweather and Unruh to mind: hardly a good thing if you’re not headed on the same individual and godlike trajectory as those two acts. Still, Robert ‘Unas’ Zimmermann (drums / vocals / art) and session pal N.K. (guitars / bass) at least make a reasonable racket while they have at it, playing some form of amorphous metal that’s dominated by crisp black metal sonics yet dabbles with grind and death metal while claiming a crustier social conscience. The blastbeats barely relent, threaded with dark, tremolo-picked melodies and large, dragging chords, and while that’s all rather stock the lengthy songs at least tend toward the ambitious, cuts like ‘To The Agressor The Valve’ (eh?) and ‘Defects’ throwing in some nice dynamic curveballs amid the stock flurries. As is often the case with projects guided by one individual you get the sense that Berkowitz could perhaps benefit from additional musical input to lend things more depth and texture, but more than anything it’d be nice to see Zimmermann balance out the band’s sound by bringing some of his other influences to the fore. After all, we’re all infinitely familiar with adequate, well-played black metal by this point, so why not give us something a bit meatier to chew on?