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"Everything I Touch Turns To Pieces" Dead To Fall |
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One of Victory's latest finds sees the usually H/C label going for the golden grooves of Melodic Death Metal and vintage Thrash with their latest savior, Chicago's own Dead To Fall. "Everything I Touch…" well not exactly King Midas, but then Dead To Fall isn't historically significant for its soul saving exploits nor will they harbor eternal darkness, typically derived of those of the black mass variety, netherworld operatives that previous extremities are measured by. An American original, Dead To Fall's style puts 'em in the same sentence as ex-Swedish Death sensations, At The Gates, high praise worthy of receiving the scrutinous stare... and not a far stretch once the mists have lifted. Similarly though, where At The Gates delivered modernity to the malevolence, creativity to the carnage, and credibly combined the spirit of early age Thrash with Nordic Death and Doom to unleash a new terror extreme, Dead To Fall is at the core, an uneasy listening experience with designs on uniting the masses home and abroad with their far reaching abilities, volumized mainly by their double edge guitar fills and myriad of time drifts. After the instrumental distance of "Prologue," they tear into album highlights, "Memory," "Eternal Gates Of Hell," and "Graven Image," where immediately are felt all consuming blast beats and unforeseen breakdowns in a fast approaching course that's minimally navigated until the will of an almighty riff, imposed in tandem scaling and rhythmic drills, and thusly becoming the Scandinavian equivalent they'd always hoped for save for their citizenship. Dead To Fall's image is of darkness and despair though not bore from violence of the gratuitous sort. Musically cut from the same flesh of an At The Gates, Amon Amarth… of "dethroned Gods" or those new school newcomers of a genetically predisposed depressionist movement-Soul Embraced of a Living Sacrifice-or generally all of those sent from the once "golden hall," they reveal the underside of human emotion. Categorically bleak sans the black outline, "Everything…" is a startling debut where doom dwells tempestuously with depression and death from a first person lament that's equal parts preachy, reproachful, and remorseless yet so instinctively human. Released by Victory Records. Po
Box 146546, Chicago, IL 60614.
Review by Vinnie Apicella [va85@columbia.edu] P.O. Box 20252
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