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Released on July 24, 2015 via Magic Bullet Records
If you’ve ever seen a four-year-old child take a train ride for the first time, you’ll have an idea of what it’s like to experience something new. But as anyone over the age of 15 knows, the older you get, the rarer that feeling is.
Why? You get used to stuff, you get cynical or just plain lazy. Especially when it comes to heavy music. There gets a point where you shrug and think you’ve have heard it all before – a logical conclusion, some may say, given that the chord structures and instruments are extremely limited.
Put it this way: you’d either have to be pretty young or sheltered to gawp in wonder at a new album from a death metal band, for instance. Yeah, there are some good ones being churned out, a billion years since the genre was spawned, but they tend not to veer too far from the path to the graveyard.
So it is more than refreshing, after decades of listening to who-knows-how-many different permutations of loud music, to hear something which, while having familiar noises shouts and roars, doesn’t sound like anything you’ve heard before.
Step forward Meatwound and their debut Addio.
Sure, there is a bit of Unsane’s visceral squall and a little of the Dillinger Escape Plan’s angular anger – plus some Jesus Lizard-style scuzz and straight-outa-Tampa death roars – but out of this maelstrom Meatwound create something completely their own.
And man, is it gripping. Not in any way a toe-tappy happy record, but it is sure riveting.
The Florida quartet have been playing music in various bands (three of them comprise the hardcore outfit Primate Research) since way back before even Lars Ulrich was exposed as bit of a dork. They say they are influenced by their state’s reputation as a magnet for ugly music and uglier people, or as they put it: “Florida is a human wasteland … a swamp-ridden cesspool of crime, drugs, carnies and mutation. Cannibal Corpse moved here to live.”
Sounds angry? They are – or so it comes across in Addio. Over the manic drums, a distorted bass lumbers high in the mix, while a feedback-ridden hardcore guitar slices through your brain and the vocals are shouted, roared and screeched inches from your face. It’s intimidating, as well as being as invigorating as plunging your head into a snowdrift. And it is worth mentioning that it is excellently produced.
It’s tough to pick a highlight – such is the short, sharp blast of anger and arm-flexing that comprise the six-song album that you’re just beginning to get your head round what has hit you when it ends. But what stands out is the groove amid the fury of ‘In Toilet’, the opener, or the muted riffs in the almost-arty ‘I am Transgressor’, which closes the album.
Then there is the wall of sound that is ‘I am Goliath’, or the tumbling drums of ‘Funeral State’, or the slabs of guitar in ‘Hand of God’ which bludgeon the listener, or the sheer racket of ‘Meat Pack’. It’s all good. And unless you are an academic with a major in guitar noise from all corners of the globe, you’ll find something new here.
So if you like noisy music, make ‘getting this album’ your next task after reading this review. It’ll make you feel like a four-year-old on a train for the very first time.
