ALBUM REVIEW: Seven Evils Spawned of Seven Heads – Swampbeast
Los Angeles’ SWAMPBEAST are one of the many hidden gems of the US’ incredibly over-saturated and vibrant underground scene. Incorporating fierce, crushing death metal hooks with the intensity and aggression of grindcore, SWAMPBEAST has an extremely energetic and powerful sound that combines some of the best aspects of both genres, with their demo Path to the Oasis and their split with VOID TERROR showcasing their talent for writing great, noisy death metal. Their debut album, Seven Evil Spawned of Seven Heads, couples all of the nuances that make the band’s sound so great with a tighter and more polished production, resulting in perhaps the band’s most impressive material to date.
Orc’s Anvil goes straight for the jugular, with the chaotic drumming, grating guitars and bellicose howls all making for a song that is as jarring as it is monstrous. The Blind God maintains much of that vicious edge, whilst taking a more focused approach of the music as a whole, with the drums, bass and guitar all adding a dense groove to the proceedings, with disjointed melodies creating a piercing counterpoint to the rest of the music. Convulsing in the Shit and Piss of Man proves to be an incredibly noisy and visceral offering, with the overall dissonance reaching new heights, complimented by exceptionally acidic snarls. Much like the album’s opener, it’s a punchy track that gets straight to the point, with not a note on here feeling unnecessary. 1000 Years of Pestilence takes the sound in the opposite direction, with huge, muscular guitars, primal drums and a noticeably reserved gutturals giving this a straight forward, but utterly monolithic, death metal sound, with the characteristic freneticism being almost completely stripped away.
Trudging Through Oblivion, a fleeting flash of feral guitar work and speed-driven drums, has a borderline grind sound, resulting in a blend of caustic musicianship and unflinching power that is more intense and savage than what has preceded it. The Permanence of Death brings back the chunky grooves, along with a slower pace, allowing the doomier tone to carry the track. There’s a few bursts of rabid energy here, but this is ultimately a dark and brooding affair built around excellent, beefy guitars and bass. Thy Flesh Sustained lurches into more discordant territories, with sharp leads cutting through the mix, along with the urgent of the drums and vocals, meaning that the band’s visceral and rhythmic sides are both on full display, a contrast that works really well here. The First Prime Evil follows in a similar vein, with great leads, sudden changes in pace and some especially hellish vocals all giving this song an unnerving, unpredictable edge that the previous song lacked, making for one of the more imaginative songs on the album.
Cerberus takes a more rhythmic approach, but feels gargantuan, due to the huge guitars and pummelling percussive sections, which give this a bombastic sound. It isn’t without it’s primal moments, with ravenous shrieks and dirge-like guitars altering the course of the song later on, a shift that turns this song into a completely different beast. Chasms Encrusted with Malformity, a short, ambient piece, does a great job of breaking up the frenzied sound that has defined this album, setting the listener up for the final track on the album, Spell of Decay, extremely well; This song strays from the band’s formula too, with slick leads opening the track that are more evocative of death/doom, along with a soaring, emotive solo towards the songs conclusion. It’s a mid-paced, brooding offering, punctuated by short whirlwinds of cacophony, that seems to end quite abruptly, meaning that the album doesn’t close on the massive, climactic note it deserved to.
Seven Evils Spawned of Seven Heads is an album that blends together some of the best parts of death metal, namely its more chaotic and rhythmic sides. The counterpoint between the more rabid, cacophonous moments on here and the more focused and tight rhythms works incredibly well, building a vast and punishing sound that it’s hard not to get drawn in by. It would have been great to hear the ambient and death/doom elements that made an appearance towards the end of the album be featured more prominently in the band’s music in the future, as they only added to the albums appeal, even if they were only used sparingly, and at the eleventh hour. With this album, SWAMPBEAST have managed to craft an impressive benchmark by which all of their future output, and the output of many of their peers, will be measured.
Rating: 8/10
Seven Evils Spawned of Seven Heads is out now via Translation Loss Records.
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