ALBUM REVIEW: Fury – Ektomorf

After a long and prominent career, EKTOMORF bring their thirteenth studio album Fury. Having started back in the early 00’s, have they maintained the barrage of sound?

We start with the track The Prophet Of Doom. From the off, it’s hard and heavy, what you’d expect. There’s plenty of throaty vocals and full on riffs ripping through. It’s a powerful start, but there’s not much to really grab you from this opener and it’s a little safe. Second song on the album is Ak 47, and you guessed it, is a song about a gun. The visceral movement of the vocals and the guitars together is pleasant, and the general notion of anger is apparent. Again, it’s not massively innovative music, but still gets the heart beating. The final moments of this song ramp up the tension a little thanks to the drums really waking up, but it all ends a little quickly.

Fury, the title track of this record, is looking to really dig into that deep hate, rather than that mad frothing craziness that thrash usually produces. It sort of hits the mark once the guitar solo hits in, where the most expressive part of the song comes to life. Unfortunately, it just feels a little like a toned-down version on the latest Doom game soundtrack. Bullet In Your Head has a more promising start, with a more distinct and confident sound. There’s a more nu metal chug being pulled into this, maybe through the delivery of the vocals being a little more sung/spoken than just shouted. It adds some tonality to this track, but again there’s just no big hook or swinging drum beat that really pulls your attention.

Halfway through the album, Faith And Strength for sure has more conviction to its message. Lyrically, it’s actually got something more to say that might speak to a listener, an actual enjoyer of metal music, looking for inspiration, rather than just mildly irksome noise made to annoy the middle aged of the middle class. It’s not a bad song, far better than most anything else on the album so far. It’s apparent that by Infernal Warfare the band seems to have woken up a little, getting together a beat and a melody that makes you want to get involved, and makes you want to shout along. The riffs have suddenly taken a sharp turn towards something memorable, and it’s such a welcome relief. They also play around with tempo, which you would have thought a foreign concept until this point. Truly, a really solid effort on this track.

These songs are short and sweet, which seems to be a double-edged sword. If it doesn’t work, the band have given themselves very little time to start making the track interesting. However, when it plays to their advantage, squashing the power of every track down into a short time space really make the difference.

Tears of Christ, again, has some decent elements that could be built upon, cool ebbs and waves in the motion of the music, a steady pace and an understanding of the direction it wants to be going in. There’s a feel of TEXAS HIPPIE COALITION – depending on which way you look at it if that’s a positive or a negative thing. Blood For Blood, thankfully, does still try to put in some diversity to the sound, with maybe a little influence from Roots Bloody Roots. It seems that once EKTOMORF really do put some shove into what they’re doing, the music turns to something you can believe was written with belief.

Another demonstration that EKTOMORF can have some flourish to their sound is If Your Willing To Die, which adds sounds just for the sake of melody and the enjoyment of the song. It’s almost as if the band had stripped back to the bare minimum on this album, a guitar solo for each song seemed enough embellishment, and little else. These little licks and effects, even a short expanse of silence to give the vocals some impact, really help flesh a track out, and thankfully this one does just that. Finally, we end with Skin Them Alive. It’s another adventure into the more thrash side of the band, and it’s finally got some punch to it. Quite why the best tracks are so damn late on this album, is a mystery. It’s ripping and angry, and it feels genuine. Again, it’s not breaking any boundaries in terms of what could be done with this sound, but it’s good.

EKTOMORF have made a very safe album here. This is as bare bones as thrash can get, but getting to that means that anything interesting has all but been removed from most of the songs. Fans shouldn’t be rejoicing for something as simple as a lift in tempo, or good use of lyrics. It’s hard to tell if Fury is sticking to what’s tried and tested because it’s easy, or because of lazy musicianship, but the problem comes down to the fact that nothing feels like it was built for impact. It was built on formula.

Rating: 4/10

Fury is out now via AFM Records.

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