Zaraza - Spasms of Rebirth (2017)
It's been a while since Zaraza's last
album. Almost a decade and a half, actually. But with the
two-piece's return, they show themselves to be firmly on top of the
filthy sludge/doom (with a few industrial slams) style as it lived in
the mid-'90s days of the band's birth, when Godflesh, Fudge Tunnel,
and others were slogging away at the height of their powers. The
blear of feedback from bass, the clang and punch of the drums and
cymbals, and the snarling gutturality of the vocals come together in
a nasty piece of work that's pretty damn compelling in its
slow-moving roil of dissonance and dirtiness.
The slow-burn dredging of the
instruments gets a lot of focus over the course of the album, and
accordingly, the sustain on the strings is matched by a wide impact
from the drums. It feels big even while building up to the
outbursts, and the weighty crashes from both sides do a great job of
hammering down listeners who've got it turned up to suitable volume.
There's shades of early black metal to the seriousness of the lyrics'
promises of violence (not to mention the buzz-saw grinding), most
pronounced in “Blood.ov.Psychiatrists” and its nasty gnashing.
Over the whole of the album, there's a grimness that tends to be
lacking from most of the modern sludge emulators, and the songs
practically drip with miserable abandon, so while there's not much
range to the tempos, the heavy oppression of the music draws in
enough variation in other aspects to squarely hit the mark. Mean,
heavy, and almost unbearably slabby, Spasms of Rebirth firmly
reestablishes Zaraza as a force to be reckoned with on the less
amiable side of sludge.
~ Gabriel
For Fans Of; Dead Existence,
Fleshpress, Fudge Tunnel, Mudbath, Skin Chamber
~
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