Thursday 5 January 2012

Facebreaker - Bloodred Hell

FACEBREAKER - Bloodred Hell (RAGE OF ACHILLES - CD 2004)
“Welcome to Hell” – with these words Swedish FACEBREAKER invites us to listen to their debut album. And I'm totally tempted to get a closer look at them. Why? Well, such bands simply fit my musical taste so well... Just listen to the guitar sound FACEBREAKER has. It’s rooted so deeply in the Swedish tradition, that you can’t mistake it with anything else - it must be Swedish death metal band!!! I love it, it is fantastic sound (produced by Jonas Kjellgren at Black Lounge Studio), definitely my favourite one, especially if it comes along with my favourite deadly, rotten style.
Musically FACEBREAKER is not as melodic as DISMEMBER for instance, but they do take some influences from recent GRAVE albums surely. In other parts the music reminds me also some other Swedish gods, bands like VOMITORY and PAGANIZER, BLOODBATH, as well as the German FLESHCRAWL. It’s equally brutal and straight forward, with few more melodic fragments. But first of all, it’s great headbanger’s stuff. The riffs will make you bang your head and move like a crazy drunken maniac. Or a fuckin' zombie... Without remorse, it’s an unstoppable cannonade of riffs and drums, with great guttural vocals. And take a look at the lyrics that are dealing with murders mostly! Feel the thoughts of a killer, see the fear in the eyes of his victims... Grab the knife and use it properly!
Luckily this music isn’t too complex; songs’ structures are rather simple and basic – with catchy choruses, verses, etc. Songs like “Human Spoil” start with crushing slow riff that change into mid paced, damn catchy tunes, even a scream-with-me kind of a chorus. I also like that melody in this song a lot, definitely a highlight of this CD. Such a simple recipe, but what a great result. If “Human Spoil” was rather slower and kind of melancholic, then obviously the next song should be more aggressive. And it is. But “Command of the Dark” isn’t too fast neither, it just has that brutal feeling and aggressive edge.
As overall all songs from “Bloodred Hell” are equally good. Honestly there isn’t a bad tune, each track has great riffs, some catchy fragments, choruses, where you can scream along with the band (“I am the hater of godssss!!!!!!!!!!”). Maybe if I had to complain on any aspects of this album I would say that sometimes I have a feeling that most of the songs sound too similar to each other. I mean, they’re all based on similar ideas and tempos, etc, so sometimes it may be difficult to recognize which song I listen to at the moment. But that's not really a complain from my side, only sort of a feeling. I did enjoy this album a lot and right from the first track FACEBREAKER became one of my favourite bands nowadays.
Final rate: 85/100
PS. I've got the first pressing CD, from RAGE OF ACHILLES, but since that label doesn't exist Facebreaker has re-released that album on CYCLONE EMPIRE and added few extra songs. I won't be buying a second copy of the same album, but I someone has the second pressing, may I ask for recording me those bonus tracks? It's just always cool to get those extras also...

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