Once you start listening to Maze of Terror, there is no turning back from the unspeakable sounding chaos that comes insidiously blasting out the speakers like an inhumane entity crawling out of some starless void looking to annihilate humanity! The band’s unyielding brutality is on full display with the release of their second full-length release, “Offer to the Fucking Beasts.”
This trio of musicians from Lima, Peru combines such a plethora of ruthless sounding influences. I've reviewed a fair amount of bands from Peru and I must admit the passion that these bands have for extreme metal music is extraordinary. Each track is written with a profoundly sinister edge, so you never feel like the band is just going through the motions and cranking out painfully boring recycled riffs that were written by some shitty Metallica copycat band.
The opening track, “Priest of the Ancient Ones,” dives right into the Lovecraftian themed world which quite a few bands have explored before, but just like the bands before them Maze of Terror finds a way to create a fresh and merciless sounding world that grabs you instantly like the tentacles from a Lovecraft inspired beast. Maze of Terror blends old school death metal with face shredding thrash metal that reminds me a lot of bands like Messiah, Dark Angel and Cancer. I even hear some teutonic thrash influences like Kreator, Sodom and Exumer. The band overloads listeners with a tidal wave of agonizing arrangements, as well as some monstrous sounding vocals. There is so much raw and uncompromising energy in the band’s overall sound that each riff and blast beat sends a massive seismic shock through one’s ears.
The band continues the fiendish attack throughout the release by dealing out more cannibalistic pieces of extreme music like, “Blessed by Sickness and Death,” “Angels of Acid” and “Blood Horror Cult.” Honestly, the quality of the recording on the bass and how it compliments the hell fire sounding guitar riffs is what keeps you fully locked into each composition. I will say that sometimes I wished that the guitar parts would be a bit louder and give the music a larger sound and feel, but the bass tone throughout this release is what gives the album such a wicked sounding tone. Also, the thunderous sounding drum parts on this album are not to be overlooked, especially the way the drummer did those unbelievably quick and fluid drum fills on the song, “Death by Fire.” You wonder if the drummer is even human, or some entity from beyond sent to shatter our minds by playing with juggernaut sized force!
One of my favorite songs off of the album, “Starbeast,” mixes malevolent celestial sounding noises that get washed away by a cataclysmic guitar assault. Even though I have reviewed countless bands that play this style of music, I can always differentiate between the ones that get how to step outside the box by coming up with unique and dynamic sounding arrangements. I thought Maze of Torment did that for the most part on this album, especially with tracks like, “Starbeast,” and the album’s final song, “Shub Niggurath Awakes.”
Musically, I cannot complain too much about this release, because “Offer to the Fucking Beasts,” is exactly what you would want if you are a ravenous metal fiend looking for something truly devastating. Hopefully with future releases the band keeps building off of the ideas they put forth with this album, particularly the raw and bombastic sounding energy that they conveyed so well on this album. Highly recommend checking it out and I look forward to more music from Maze of Terror in the future, because after a release like this one, you need to keep the momentum going.
Do not let the colorful flowers on the album cover fool you! Obsolete’s debut album, “Animate//Isolate,” is like a titanic sized death/thrash napalm shower violently raining down upon the metal world. Based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, this group of savage extreme metal musicians hammers out an endless technical onslaught of pure malevolent sounding metal music.
Working with Unspeakable Axe Records for the release of the album, I really feel as though Obsolete puts their own stamp on what one would expect to hear from a young and hungry extreme metal band. I will be honesty and admit that death/thrash albums have become rather repetitive over the last couple years with a few exceptions. Actually, I would say that most of those exceptions have come from Unspeakable Axe Records, mainly because whoever runs the label seems to know what is going on in terms of quality sounding metal music.
Obsolete joins the Unspeakable Axe ranks by putting together a fierce sounding album and utterly decimates all that stand in their path by writing some solid cuts of technical brutality. From start to finish, the caliber of musician displayed on this album was unbelievably impressive. As much as I want to keep putting over their musicianship, I have to also highlight the band’s strong songwriting skills. The overall production was definitely something I noticed right away. Each track conveys such raw and passionate energy that you become completely engulfed by these blistering guitar riffs and ear crushing drum parts.
The album’s opening track, “Still,” begins by unleashing a blizzard of distorted chaos across the musical landscape and sends seismic shockwaves from behind the drummer’s kit with enough force to level a town. Also, the band knows how to compose dynamic arrangements, so you are not inundated with sloppy death thrash riffs that maintain the same boring tempo throughout the entire song.
Tracks like, “The Slough,” “Old Horizon” and “Silent Freeway,” all exhibit a plethora of tormenting technical guitar work. Also, the vocals throughout this album are truly haunting and convey that unapologetic nature that one would expect from early death metal records that have ruthless thrash metal elements as well. Currently, I have noticed too many metal artists trying to sound aggressive and end up sounding like their parent’s would not give them ice cream for dessert, so they decided to form a metal band and scream like a pack of pestilent children.
Moving on, “The Fog,” was probably my favorite song off of this album and is definitely a track that I think most fans of extreme death thrash metal will enjoy. The guitar playing once again is executed with such savage precision and the vocals provide a sinister touch to the overall tsunami of brutality. The last song on the album, "Intercostal," was a close second in terms of top tracks and contains some mind bending rhythms to construct one venomous composition.
In conclusion, out of the nine tracks featured on this album I do not believe listeners will be disappointed. If anything, they are going to get their skin shredded off by the raw sounding aggression that this band delivers. Obsolete does not fumble the ball with their debut album, “Animate//Isolate,” and builds up anticipation for what this band is capable of coming up with next. This group of musicians does not need any cheesy gimmicks, or cartoony sounding lyrics to get people interested. They let the music do the talking, and after listening to this album, they are making a pretty powerful statement!
Check out the song "Still" below :
Album comes out April 19th, 2021. Pre-order through Unspeakable Axe Records below:
The first time I saw Hemotoxin perform live was back in 2013 opening up for the thrash metal band Havok at the Red House in Walnut Creek, CA. I remember watching a fearsome group of young and hungry death/thrash musicians put on one hell of a performance. Since then Hemotoxin has continued to excel and push themselves as musicians, thus establishing themselves as one of Contra Costa County's most exceptional metal acts. Their most recent album, "Restructure the Molded Mind," is a technical onslaught of mind crushing brutality that I highly recommend checking out. The band's guitarist/singer Michael Anthony Chavez was nice enough to answer some questions regarding the album along with some other topics. Here is the full interview below...
Hello Michael! Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions pertaining to the world of Hemotoxin. The band has been around for almost ten years I believe, and even though you have gone through a fair amount of line-up changes, you continue to be a resilient and driven force within the Bay Area metal community.
Michael: That’s right, this year marks ten years since I wrote the first Hemotoxin “Biohazard” on my old Yamaha drum machine. And yeah through the decade we’ve had quite a few people come and go, thankfully I’ve been lucky enough to still have the same writing partner through those years in our drummer Brandon. Having him as a consistently productive member of the band has been a big reason for our longevity. We just strive to make awesome music for ourselves, we wanna satisfy ourselves first and then deliver what we think is sick to our audience, and hopefully they agree, that’s something we’ve been doing together even before Hemotoxin, I really believe in our chemistry.
I wanted to begin by talking about your most recent album, “Restructure the Molded Mind,” which is an album that I really enjoyed and one I had been looking forward to, especially coming off of your sophomore album, “Biological Enslavement.” Now that, “Restructure the Molded Mind,”has been out since March of this year, what are your thoughts on the album overall? How has the feedback been from the fans?
Michael: I’m glad you enjoyed it and feel that way in comparison to Biological. I’m extremely happy with how it came out, Restructure the Molded Mind is a 28 minute frenzy of vicious technical riffs played by musicians with insane ability and thankfully people really enjoyed it, minus the bad timing with covid I was really happy with this release and the response from people, overall it’s been very positive.
Now I remember talking to you at the Morbid Angel show last November and you had told me a bit about the recording process for the album and I was wondering if you could give the readers more detail on how the album was recorded? Also, take us through the songwriting process and did you have all the tracks ready to go before you started the initial recording?
Michael: Having all of our songs prepared before we hit the studio is a big deal for me, especially in this case when people had been waiting to hear a new record from us for a while I knew whatever we did had to be extremely deliberate and on point. Songs like Unreality I actually had written before Biological Enslavement, but I had always had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do with the song past the first riff, so it never made it to that album, but others like Acrimony I had written a month before we began recording. Execution was like my magnum opus, the song where I could combined every element of what makes us Hemotoxin and pushing that as far and hard as I can.
The recording process, I hate to admit was very rocky. We ended up having a falling out with the engineer which is why there’s no studio or engineer credited, because he requested his name not be listed. We actually had two mixes done which resulted in two tracks we had intended to have on the album being eliminated due to bad track editing, our next release will feature these two tracks titled “Inherited Disaster” and “Desomorphine” (you can find this song on our KFJC set available on YouTube). So overall it was a good learning experience, we tried to cut corners to save costs but it ended up biting us in the ass, but at the end of the day we did the right thing and got a great sounding album out of it.
Being that, “Restructure the Molded Mind,” is your third full-length album to date, I wanted to know how you feel about the band’s evolution in terms of overall sound and musical direction. I remember first hearing you guys when I saw you open for Havok back in 2013, and I could tell you guys were a young and hungry band, but now you have really taken your style of progressive thrash/death metal to an even greater level. What do you contribute to the success and progression of the Hemotoxin sound?
Michael: I feel very proud of the sound we’ve developed over the years. When it comes down to it that I think at this point with the line up changes we’ve had I almost feel like that’s what defines our evolution. Since each line up has done one full length album each I feel like each one (Between Forever and the end, Biological and Restructure) has its own aura about it, although at its core it’s still Brandon and I the leads from our old guitar players Hunter and Rohwer gave the album a different flavor. I still feel that our evolution really reached a turning point with a track like Forgotten Faces, that one was written by Rohwer and it really forced us out to expand our sound. I think now we’re getting to a point where we’re self aware of our own ability and on Restructure especially with the addition of Shane I think that’s starting to show more and more.
Current Line-up (Michael, Shane and Brandon)
You, Brandon and Nathan were nice enough to contribute to the documentary that Yuvraj and I did about the Bay Area metal community a couple years back. In that documentary we talked about the Contra Costa County metal scene and I have always felt that Hemotoxin is without question one of the strongest bands to have come out of the area in recent years. I wanted to get your thoughts on the Contra Costa County music scene and how it has changed since you first started playing? Before this whole pandemic what stood out the most to you regarding the scene?
Michael: First I have to say I think the music scene we’ve had out here since the 80’s has been criminally underrated in the scope of the entire California scene. Bands like Sadus, Autopsy, Decimatus, Antagony and Cartilage among many many others came out this area and cut their teeth playing anywhere that could host shows from out doors, garages, backyards, pizza shops. CoCo County has always had a DIY attitude because it’s such a small suburban kind of area, I believe the first show Dio ever played with his solo band on the Holy Diver was at The Barn in Antioch literally inside of a barn. I’ve always been extremely proud to claim this area because of that, we have a rich history that I believe deserves more recognition than it gets.
Sort of touching on that last question when talking about the local scene, I wanted to bring up Red House, which was a live music venue in Walnut Creek that you guys played from time to time. I actually believe the last show I saw at Red House before it closed down was you along with Cartilage (At the time you were also playing with them), Dismembered Carnage and some out of town band that had a lead singer who threw a tantrum onstage. What are your thoughts on Red House being no longer around? What do you think were some of the positives and the negatives about the venue? Can we see another venue similar to Red House return to the area?
Michael: I absolutely miss the red house. That venue provided a bridge for young high school aged kids to have a platform to become a local band and allow a scene/community to build and for about 11 years that’s what red house did, it brought different groups of kids together who otherwise wouldn’t have met. The one thing I don’t think most musicians consider is the cost to actually put on a show, that requires lights, bar, bathrooms, staff and insurance after all the licensing and paper work of course. Red House gave us that every time we played there no matter if the shows were packed or not, what we failed to do is provide the audience that could help financially facilitate that platform to make it sustainable for future generations. Because now high school kids that form a band don’t really have any platform besides their backyard or something. You can rent a hall out and do it that way but the amount of money it takes to run one show is very expensive and not many people have the means to make that happen. I think/hope there will be another way for kids to get themselves out there, obviously we have plenty of online platforms that work perfectly, but I think people still need that on stage experience in front of an audience. I remember before Red House there were high school battle of the bands at the concord pavilion, my best hope is maybe one day that comes back especially with covid ravaging the tour industry it could be a good way for the concord pavilion to generate revenue, I guess we’ll see!
Hemotoxin's last show at Red House
Michael, looking to the future which I know can be really challenging right now with so much ridiculousness and uncertainty going on in the world, but what are your plans for Hemotoxin going forward? Do you have other projects in the works?
Michael: Yeah as far as touring or shows it’s hard to say at this point, we got nothing planned as of now. We’ve just been using this time to get creative and really conceptualize album number four, which I’m happy to say has one track already written, so who knows we could have another album done before we even play another show. Besides that’s we got a new music video coming out soon for the track “Automation” and I’m super excited to release that we shot it in 5k resolution so I can promise it’s gonna look amazing.
Last question, what advice would you give young bands that are just starting out?
Michael: Just keep playing, keep posting, annoy people, if music is what you wanna do make it your life and only surround yourself with people who support what you do. Make it sustainable, don’t drown in your own hopes and dreams, get a job make some money, support yourself/family, make good music and don’t stop talking about it, network and make friends.
Michael, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this interview and I hope to see you perform live once this pandemic garbage is handled to where we can see live music again.
Michael: It’s my pleasure, you’ve always been super supportive of us, I really appreciate that you enjoy what we do! And yeah same, I go to shows to see my friends and hangout, sometimes even if I’m not 100% into all the bands I’ll still show up at a show just because I know I’ll see my friends there. I miss that a lot and I hope it comes back so we can hit the stage as well.
Hemotoxin does not disappoint with their newest onslaught of cranial splitting death/thrash. The band's third full-length album, “Restructure the Molded Mind,” features scorching technicality, uncompromising brutality and plenty of headbanging mind altering riffs.
These San Francisco Bay Area musicians took their time this new album, which in all honesty was hard for me to accept, especially after the band’s impressive 2016 release, “Biological Enslavement.” I remember hearing that album and doing the review thinking, “Damn, these guys have really raised the bar!” Ever since the beginning Hemotoxin has shown promise, but I believe, “Biological Enslavement,” is where the band completely surpassed their previous recordings by developing an extremely tight and technical sound. Also, it was the first album of theirs on Unspeakable Axe Records, a label that I have a tremendous amount respect for, and the label that will be releasing this new album as well.
“Restructure the Molded Mind,” is another solid offering from the band and I do believe it is their most ambitious effort to date. The musicianship and songwriting on this album is in all honesty even more astonishing than what was on, "Biological Enslavement." Unlike some bands who think they are writing complex thought provoking lyrics, but end up sounding like Garth from Wayne's World trying to explain conspiracy theories, Hemotoxin crafts these very profound messages that are not pretentious and really resonate with where our society is heading.
Overall, their musicianship on this album is simply outstanding, however, they do not over complicate the listener with pointless technical arrangements. Take for example the song, “Legions of Alienation,” where the open riff section hits hard like a suplex from Brock Lesnar, matching Michael’s ferocious delivery. Also, Michael lays down an exceptional guitar solo during the song that highlights his strong lead guitar talents.
Tracks like “Unreality” and “Execution” do a great job conveying a progressive side at times, which I think creates a brilliant contrast with the band’s raw old school death thrash mentality. You just cannot predict where this band will go and that is what I tend enjoy most about this album. Another song I want to mention is, “Automation,” which I consider to be my favorite track off of the album. I felt the songwriting on this track was flawless as well as the instrumental compositions. This is what metal radio stations should be playing and not that watered down hardcore nonsense where the band looks like they are entering a fashion show for biggest hipster douche in the universe.
In conclusion, Hemotoxin does not need to win a battle of the bands, or pay to play on a big metal show in order to feel like they are a worthy act, because at the end of the day these musicians prove time and time again that they are driven to create meaningful technical death thrash music. I feel that, “Restructure the Molded Mind,” is everything a ravenous death thrash maniac could ever want and more, especially in terms of solid songwriting. This is without a doubt an early contender for one of the best albums to come out this year and one I hope captures the ears and minds of the metal community in the months ahead.
Hellish death thrash devastation invades the metal world with Phylactery’s debut full-length release, “Necromancy Enthroned.” These Canadian extreme metal musicians take the relentless speed of thrash with the unforgiving brutality of old school death metal and create some terrorizing sounds of unholy proportions.
Phylactery happens to be yet another band from Unspeakable Axe Records that does not disappoint and knows how to construct solid extreme metal music. Their debut album features eleven tracks of vicious riffs, thunderous drumming and demonic sounding vocals of unworldly terror. For their first album I think the band did a solid job crafting a unique raw and brutal sound that simply does not fall into the category of generic metal garbage.
Each track on the album runs about the same length of time and the songs are usually about two to three minutes long. I think length of each song is just perfect for the band to deliver their merciless death thrash assault. If the songs were longer I believe the band would be recycling riffs to the point of complete and unbearable redundancy. The opening song off the album, “Risen Restless Dead,” wastes no time by thrashing away at a flesh tearing riff. Even though the song is short there are plenty of distinct riffs that are vicious yet extremely catchy. The band’s nonstop aggression continues on the second track, “Wisdom of Heretics,” with bombastic drumming and lightning fast guitar parts. I really liked the guitar solo, because the lead guitarist composed something that actually complimented the song instead of being a random hurricane of obnoxious shredding. Don’t get me wrong, I like shredding when it has a purpose and is not just an excuse to show how fast you can play through scales.
Out of the elven tracks I find choosing a favorite to be a difficult task, but I will name some of the ones that I think standout a little more than the others. “Morbid Existence,” is a furious cut of metal music with insane sounding verse sections accompanied by haunting vocal parts. “Where I Dwell” contains some bone crushing guitar riffs and the bass sound adds an extra explosion to the distorted fiery chaos. I have talked about this before in previous reviews and still want to stress the importance of having a strong bass sound. There are some bands who turn the bass volume down to where I question if the bass player even showed up during the recording process. The final song I want to mention is, “Enslaved by the Dawn.” On this track the band delivers some nasty riffs of raw thrash attitude. I want to try and compare them to other bands, however, it is hard because their sound takes from so many different extreme metal elements.
For their debut album I think Phylactery did a great job being themselves and leaving room for them to take their music into an even more unforgiving and brutal level. Some bands want to hit home runs for their first album, but sometimes just offering a consistent brutal sound is enough to peak the interest of listeners. Highly recommended for people who desire some vicious thrash and raw old school death metal blended together into one diabolical concoction. Also, I recommend people check them out because they are signed to Unspeakable Axe Records. I trust Unspeakable Axe Records more than I trust the people in charge of running the state I live in…
