Extinction A.D. – Culture of Violence

By RingMaster Review on April 30, 2022 • ( 0 )

Its press release states that Culture of Violence is “the album we’ve been in the process of creating since 2015. This is the record where we can firmly say with confidence, “This is what XAD is all about!””. It is a strong statement from US metallers EXTINCTION A.D given that previous encounters like their last album, Decimation Treaty of 2018, was no soft touch in power and persuasion. But as Culture of Violence assaults and bullies for the umpteenth time we cannot raise any disagreement to their claim with it being easily their finest offering yet.

The album is a cauldron of the band’s thrash, extreme metal and hardcore nurtured sound but an inferno defined by the band’s most inventively sculpted and copiously textured enterprise yet. It is viral in its assault and ferocity, addictive in its grooving and contagion; the kind of merging of nostalgia and modern invention we for one can only get lustful over especially for the predacious individuality it breeds and breaths in every second of Culture of Violence.

The Long Island band take on the world and all its deceits, dishonesties, and dishonours with relish from the first second of its opening title track, the quartet of vocalist/guitarist Rick Jimenez, lead guitarist Ian Cimaglia, bassist Tom Wood and drummer Mike Sciulara going for the jugular with aggressive relish. Riffs harry and rhythms punch home from that first second, bearing no mercy but already thick contagion as the throat of Jimenez roars. Relentlessly nagging at the senses whilst tearing strips off their welcoming flesh, track and release easily ignited the fires of want and an appetite which only became greedier by the moment.

It was a lust soon fed and egged on by the following pair of Dominion and Thirteen. The first similarly holds nothing back in its infernal trespass and feral catchiness, riffs rapaciously driving through ears as Wood venomously grooves and Sciulara attacks. Within the onslaught though, predacious twists of deceitful restraint and webs of melodic temptation reveal their lures, a tapestry of temptation just as ripe within the second of the two. It is a song which from melodic beginnings shows a sense of merciful tempting but soon rises up in a fiery blaze of sound and discontent, a slab of thrash and groove metal quickly devoured as too its inventive design of twists and surprises.

The brutally glorious and fiercely galvanic Mastic is next up, its hellacious cyclone followed and matched in fearsome pleasure by 1992 with its punk cured hostility and bloodthirsty contagion. Both tracks sparked mutual hollering and robustly swung muscles, the second a tempest of rhythmic manipulation impossible to ignore before Heads Will Roll unleashed its ruthless rock ‘n’ roll. Heavy metal veined, groove metal strung, the song again pushed the tapestry of adventure and craft within its thrash kilned hardcore blooded sound to capture ears and imagination alike in a Billy Bio meets Slayer like uproar.

Through the subsequent invention loaded exploits of the diversely styled Behind the Times and Star Spangled Banner with its corrosive demeanour and flirtatious modern metal aggression, EXTINCTION A.D. only raised the ante in temptation again, letting Praise the Fraud off its leash quickly after to menace and excite the senses. It is another of the album’s predators, stalking the listener between unbridled surges of creative violence and bruising temptation.

With National Disaster providing a final tirade of sound and enterprise with feral appetite, the track intoxicating brutality and ravenous virulence combined, Culture of Violence left us weak kneed and desperate for more.

With most albums there are moments which pale against others, even if only slightly, but truly every second of Culture of Violence hit the spot with edacious prowess, EXTINCTION A.D. indeed revealing the best of themselves in every aspect within what can only be declared as another metal album of the year contender.

Culture of Violence is out now through Unique Leader Records.