ALBUM REVIEW: Rise To Power – Memoriam

So few supergroups surpass the sum of their parts, so few projects are suffused with the sonic expertise their creators collectively share. But as the title of their fifth album suggests, MEMORIAM are well within their rights to Rise To Power. Born from the ashes of BOLT THROWER’s dismantling following the death of Martin Kearns, and boasting an envious CV including members of BENEDICTION, NAPALM DEATH and KILLING JOKE, in just eight short years they’ve crafted a death metal dynasty that stands defiantly on its own two feet.

Rise To Power picks up where the soldiers of 2021’s To The End left off, digging deeper into the sonic trenches they began routing. Whereas MEMORIAM’s first three albums delivered old school death metal at breakneck speeds, Rise To Power leans into a drearily doomy melodic death metal drawl. I Am The Enemy is a dark cloud enclosing around you, its sparse drums power-drilling your mind into oblivion as dissonant chords chime against vocalist Karl Willetts‘ signature growl; the title track’s stadium-sized build-up threatens to shoot them out of the trenches and into the skies; and Annihilation’s Dawn blends point blank death metal with a melodic sensibility that sends your senses into overdrive, soundtracking your own personal D-Day. 

With only one track under the five-minute mark, their trademark sound sometimes slips into your subconscious. Whilst Scott Fairfax’s fretwork is a firestorm of refreshing ideas, Spike T. Smith’s drilling fills and machine-gun double-bass blasts merge into a mud slide of noise to slip-through. On an album as lyrically cinematic as Rise To Power, tracks like The Conflict Within live up to their title, threatening to become a soundtrack rather than the star of the show. 

But deep down, Rise To Power is the sound of a supergroup doing just that. Whilst opener Never Forget, Never Again (6 Million Dead) is top-drawer death metal drip-fed directly into your bloodstream, closer This Pain is a blueprint for the genre’s future, written by its pioneers. Old school death metal ideals dance with the devil of melodic doom, changing gears between the two so seamlessly you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a standard. 

Away from their sonic supremacy, war-obsessed Willetts journeys further down the conceptual rabbit-hole MEMORIAM began descending down on debut For The Fallen. Part two of a second trilogy, Rise To Power explores grief, loss and despair through the lens of two events: the ongoing invasion of and war in Ukraine, and the Holocaust. 

But rather than retread common death metal ground, Willetts and co use our past and present to teach us how to move forward in the future. Never Forget, Never Again encourages us to do just that, to ensure we never forget what came before and to ensure it never happens again, whilst closer This Pain is a triumphant call-to-arms to charge through the hardest of times, that storm clouds change to clear skies soon enough: “This pain will end, my heart shall mend again / This pain will end, and I shall live again”. It’s a refreshingly welcome perspective death metal rarely dwells on, helping Rise To Power to shine even more.

With death metal undoubtedly in rude health right now, it should be no surprise that elder statesmen like MEMORIAM aren’t resting on their laurels but are instead continuing to revolutionise and evolve the very genre they helped pioneer in the first place. If To The End hadn’t persuaded you, Rise To Power is all the proof you need that MEMORIAM are undisputed kings of death-doom.

Rating: 9/10

Rise To Power is out now via Reaper Entertainment.

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