Review: Rude "Soul Recall"

Band: Rude
Album: Soul Recall

Review:

    Time travel has not been invented yet, right? I already know the answer since the Nocturnus android from “The Key” is not ruling the world, but I just needed to make sure after listening to this album. 
    Rude, an up and coming death metal band from Oakland, CA, captures the raw aggressive nature of old school death metal with their debut release, “Soul Recall.” I hear a wide variety of extreme music influences ranging from Pestilence, Death, Autopsy, Bolt Thrower, Master and Morbid Angel. Also, the production value for this album sounds like something that was recording during the late eighties or the early nineties.  
    Of course, Rude is one of many new bands following in the colossal foot steps set by those early death metal groups. With “Soul Recall,” Rude finds multiple ways to separate themselves from the usual suspects. The opening track, “Haunted,” dives straight into a fiery riff and double bass drum world of madness. Rude’s vocalist narrates gruesome lyrics with an awesome tortured sounding vocal delivery. As the music changes from verse to verse Rude always maintains a consistent brutal sound. The following track, “In Thy Name” continues the nonsense old school death metal style. I felt with this track the band offered up a shorter, yet still very intense musical piece compared to the opening song. 
    Now, the third track on this album, “Memorial,” is where the band really demonstrates their solid level of musicianship. One of the more longer tracks on this album, “Memorial,” creates a bone chilling atmosphere full of abrasive sounding riffs, fluid technical guitar leads and more insane double bass drum rhythms. My favorite part of the song is where the music stops and the bass player does this sinister sounding bass line. His bass fills sound like the stuff that Steve DiGiorgio would record for an album.
    The title track off of this album, “Soul Recall,” is another slamming old school death metal beast. Rude puts emphasis on the very percussive sounding riffs to create a fine extreme piece of music. Track five, “Forsaker,” unleashes more raw head banging rage with plenty of chaotic blast beats and machine gun sounding guitar riffs.
    Track six, “Conjuring of Fates,” happens to be my favorite song on this album. The beginning celestial echoing guitar effect creates this pleasant vibe that becomes instantly disintegrated by a monstrous slow Sabbath like riff. This track pushes the band’s musical talents to the threshold of extreme music, and the end product sounds damn good. The last two tracks “Last of Us” and “Internal Ascension” are both strong closing tracks. “Internal Ascension” especially caught my ear with its crazy guitar shredding solos and glorious palm muted bone breaking riffs.
    Rude just happens to play the style of death metal that I really enjoy, and they created their own distinct identity with “Soul Recall.” Compared to the other recent old school death metal sounding acts Rude knows how to play their instruments and can write well-crafted songs. I hate having to be rude, but some new bands I have reviewed can’t write songs for shit. I usually just hear random technical guitar riffs with subpar drum parts over a vocalist who sounds like he is constipated. That of course is definitely not the case with Rude. I highly recommend checking out this album if you desire killer classic sounding old school death metal. Was the best and is still the best style of death metal!