ALBUM REVIEW: Servants Of Violence – Casket Feeder
Good Omens, the revered comedy/fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, describes Milton Keynes thus: “Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.” It’s a wonderful understatement. If you want an aural representation of the city, you might look to CASKET FEEDER, whose two EPs to date have shown a penchant for blending hardcore with death metal in a way that’s a far more accurate aural representation of most people’s opinion of the place.
The comparisons with standard-bearers VENOM PRISON will no doubt be drawn, and in part they’re certainly warranted but there’s just as much here that owes far more to the churning hardcore of NAILS or even MASTIFF. On their debut album Servants Of Violence, CASKET FEEDER have a stall to set out, and over the course of just shy of 40 minutes, they prove themselves to be firmly rooted in their sound, though there’s still plenty of work to be done and progression to be had.
Opener To The Hounds Go The Faithful opens with the classic Scandinavian death metal tone and riffing style, a slow stomp with a menacing lead as the song builds momentum and vocalist Matt Downes makes his presence known with hardcore-inflected barks and lower, cavernous roars. Mask Of Sorrow begins similarly, taking cues from melodeath in the vein of AT THE GATES or THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER. It’s more frenetic and features some huge grooves especially around its halfway mark as it briefly settles into a stomp.
On the other side, Vulture Culture leans more into CASKET FEEDER’s hardcore influences in vocal delivery and its breakneck pacing, but its closing moments still circle back round to the churn and gutturals of death metal. It’s a recurring theme of the album; there are moments of breakout hardcore fury all underpinned by the band’s love of the chainsawing guitar and battering ram drumming. While songs like Doomsday Prophecy don’t reinvent the wheel or bring anything particularly new to the table, they’ve an undeniable allure in their simplicity and rampaging grooves. Wading Through The Dead And Deceased trades any remaining subtlety for blastbeats, as does the title track.
It’s easy to get caught up in Servants Of Violence’s rip-roaring, take-no-prisoners approach but it’s by no means perfect. Its structure is an oddity; the title track has all the makings of a finale, especially in its closing minute, but instead it’s two-thirds of the way through the album; a false finish, in effect. It lumbers on past this for three more tracks, with a second and proper closer in Edge Of Collapse that ups the doom and gloom for a morose, but still visceral, final four minutes.
There’s also a lack of refinement to the songwriting; while sonically that may work within the genre, it takes a great deal of refinement to make great songs sound rough around the edges but CASKET FEEDER aren’t there yet; there are certainly flashes, but they need to work on their craft a while longer. That’s hardly fair though, given this is still their debut effort, and when considering that, it’s an easy recommendation for fans of that death metal and hardcore hybrid – and if they fulfil the promise they show here, they might even give a reason to be a tiny bit proud of Milton Keynes.
Rating: 7/10
Servants Of Violence is set for release on May 20th via self-release.
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