Taking D-beat crust punk and adding a pulverizing helping of backend death brutality, Atrament summons forth an abysmal sounding world of eternal chaos. Each track on the Oakland, CA based band’s new album, “Scum Sect,” is a sinister attack of pure blackened hatred sure enough to drain the happiness right out of your inner soul.
Their debut album, “Eternal Downfall,” was an impressive and utterly extreme sounding release and was one of my favorite releases for that year. Somehow the band takes the music into even more blasphemous and dark directions with their sophomore album, “Scum Sect,” by writing more down right unapologetic lyrics and unleashing some devastating riffs. Also, the overall musicianship on this new album is rather solid and as a whole the band is able to produce some strong tracks. Out of the ten songs on this release I don’t think you will find one track that does not fit, because the songwriting and musicianship is unbelievably consistent. Once the band hammers out the first offering of merciless sounding terror you can’t run away and are sucked into this endless nightmare of pure destruction.
The song, “Plague Upheaval,” kicks off the album with a thunderous punch of distortion and malevolent sounding vocals. The drumming is crushing is overall sound and maintains a killer groove which you hear throughout the album. I felt like the sound engineer did an awesome job with the drum and guitar levels to where every extreme sound flows in perfect synergy. The next song, “Chains of Terror,” feverishly strikes away at a ghastly sounding blackened death riff while the drumming keeps the music moving forward in blistering fashion. Another area to point out is the vocals and Atrament’s singer provides one monstrous sounding vocal delivery on this album. Songs like, “Boiling Blood,” and “Spit on Mankind,” are given an extra boost of gruesome and harsh sounding attitude by the band’s lead singer.
Other songs I want to mention are “Craven” and the last track on the album, “This Night Shall See No End.” Both tracks continue to display this bands vicious musical talents with even more sickening vocal lines and bombastic humanity destroying riff compositions. “This Night Shall See No End,” is probably my favorite song off the album, because I like how the band combined all the different elements of black metal, death metal and crust punk to create one massive sounding extreme assault on the ears.
I think Atrament’s, “Scum Sect,” is yet another great release from this band and the album continues to build upon their vicious legacy as one of the Bay Area's strongest up and coming acts. Easily one of the most profound and intense sounding recordings to come this year in my opinion. If they sound this extreme and apocalyptic on their recordings, just imagine what these guys sound like live…the venue would probably collapse and a portal into a black and endless abyss would open up sucking everyone in, besides the promoter of course who would take all the money and get out of their faster than a blast beat.
Atrament "This Night Shall See No End"
Atrament Facebook:
