As January shared its last days, Hell was unleashed in the form of the debut Mean Messiah album. It was the re-release of an invasion of the senses which left only one question in its furious wake. Just how did we like so many others, miss it first time around.
The release is an ear withering, pleasure igniting storm of industrial death/thrash metal with much more to its irritable heart and searing blaze of sound. To simplify things it is a tempest resembling a raging tapestry of Revocation, Strapping Young Lad, and Fear Factory woven with strands of the likes of Cryptopsy, Blood Simple, and Static X yet stands as something distinctly individual to the imagination and roar of Mean Messiah.
The Czech Republic hailing band started out as the one man project of multi-instrumentalist and producer Dan Friml, formerly of Sebastian, Apostasy and many other projects. The winter of 2005 saw him begin work on his first album, its release intended for the following year but delayed and delayed by numerous problems and complications before being completed in 2013. Since then its line-up has expanded, bassist Veronika Smetanová and drummer Honza Šebek joining Friml as he took Mean Messiah live, proceeding to play the biggest festivals in the Czech Republic such as Masters Of Rock, Czech Death Fest, Agressive Fest, Basinfirefest, and Gothoom.
With the band working on a second album for release later this year to follow 2016 EP Let Us Pray, Mean Messiah and Via Nocturna has uncaged Hell again for a formidable and compelling reminder and wake up call for fans and newcomers alike. With its concept themed by people´s varied complicated journeys and destinies inevitably leading to hell, the album makes a calm, welcoming entrance though dark clouds and portentous sounds are soon looming over and invading the imagination as opener Temple of Hell grows in ears. Melodies are enticing yet sinister, rhythms predatory but restrained until throwing off their deceit and storming the barricades. From there grooves and hooks seduce as riffs and beats persist in their invasive intent as Friml’s potent tones snarl. That earlier descriptive comparison is in full swing as the track shares its dangerous and captivating virulence.
The track is superb, using familiar textures in a new and fresh design before being matched in might and success by King Pathetic. The strong unpredictability underlining its predecessor is potent again, and across the whole album to be fair, prowling the vicious rhythmic tenacity and intoxicatingly venomous melodic and sonic web covering the song. Bracing and intrusive, things are punishingly catchy as thrash and death metal enterprise roar with angry rapacity as industrial essences beckon further involvement in the progressively toned fury.
As the second built on and eclipsed the first, Spiritual Resolution breaches a new plateau of persuasion next, scavenging and thrilling the senses with its nagging choleric character while The Death Song with matching toxic dispute stalks and savages the listener with raw infectious enterprise. The first of the two weaves progressively honed melodic suggestiveness while the second lets its bestial ferocity drive the thrilling show.
Hell is the perfect name for sound and theme within the album, the first echoing and fuelling the latter as found in The Last Ride which follows. In many ways the outstanding song is the least corrosive on the album, its swinging rhythms and magnetic grooves rousing infection but there is no escaping its instinctive animosity and barb littered acrimony. With orchestral beauty and atmospheric harmonies colluding with warm melodies, it is sheer magnetism, only intriguing and griping tighter as its growing imagination borders schizophrenic.
The Game gnaws on the senses next, its riffs and beats an enjoyably persistent abrasion colluding with lust igniting electronics. Its irresistible stomp provides another appetite inflaming highlight within Hell, one more to the growing list joined by the dark instrumental climate and dance of Saltatio Mortis and the fiercely catchy caustic devouring of ears and soul cast by The End. Folk bred hues unite with extreme and groove spawn endeavour in the first with its successor a brawl of truculent rock ‘n’ roll, both as imaginative and expectations defeating as they are, certainly in the case of the second, emotionally primal.
Completed by bonus track Remedy, another ridiculously tempting slab of thrash nurtured, creatively evocative music which needs no vocal side to excite and inspire the imagination, Hell grabs the listener by the throat and takes them on one brutally thrilling ride from start to finish. It also lays down a mighty benchmark its successor will be judged by but it is hard to imagine Mean Messiah failing to live up to the challenge with their now keenly anticipated second full-length.
Hell is out now through Via Nocturna across most online stores digitally and on CD.
http://www.meanmessiah.com http://www.facebook.com/meanmessiah http://twitter.com/MeanMessiah
Pete RingMaster 07/02/2017
Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright
Its emotional turbulence is matched by that of the following God Complex, another ravenous proposal of extreme and venomously grooved metal entangled with sinister disharmony and emotional dissension. The raw vocals squalls create a great rapacious texture in the tempest and the haunting ambience sharing the song’s air, adding great discord and heart bred turmoil again in an offering inflamed with raging ire or sharing sombre caresses. The track continues to envelop and involve across its ever evolving body, sharing its discordancy with its outstanding successor, Death Sentence. It is a carnivorous piece of music and invention, but equally a thrilling adventurous dive through a wealth of avant-garde/progressive experimentation amidst a toxically grooved and rabidly irritable incitement; it all colluding for one breath-taking and emotionally pestilential offering.
Formed in 2011 but really finding its creative mojo once the current line-up was in place a couple or so years later, the Lincolnshire band soon sparked a hungry and swiftly growing fan base for their dramatically addictive sound which reached its first pinnacle in the Hands Sewn Together EP. Live too, the band has grown to be one of Britain’s prime incitements, sharing stages with the likes of American Head Charge, Kindred, ESO, Breed 77, Sworn Amongst, Maplerun, Evil Scarecrow, and Bloodshot Dawn amongst many along the way. Linking up with EP producer Matt Hyde (Machine Head, Trivium, Fightstar, As I Lay Dying and Slipknot) again for The Root Of Man, the quintet of brothers Drew (drums/ programming) and Peter ‘Mr Clone’ Moore (vocals), Conor (guitar) and Liam Richardson (guitar), and Mike Bradbury (bass) are seemingly poised to set their place at the head table of the UK and indeed European metal scene.
The latter of those three references nudges thoughts again as the thick mesmeric and emotive embrace of Sacred takes over, the track crawling seductively over the senses as vocals, guitars, and keys charm and tantalise ears. With the bass grumbling and beats swinging in tandem, the track beguiles from its first second, before being followed and overshadowed by the quite irresistible I Will Have My Day, a fiercely rousing and relentless White Zombie incitement with again great AIC sounding harmonies and melodic caresses.
The Butterfly Effect opens with its title track, a short but evocative instrumental spawned from the dark incitement of shadows and carrying the portentous lure of anthemic rhythms. Wrapped in atmospheric chills and a haunting synth spawned ambience, the piece swiftly grips ears and imagination, accentuating it’s tempting with a subsequent veining of enticing guitar. It is a potent introduction quickly taken to new heights by Tongue which leaps from the invasive sonic mist of its predecessor. The second track descends on the senses like a tsunami, smothering and disturbing their previous relative calm with a wall of carnivorous riffs and barbarous rhythms guided by raw antipathy. As the song settles though, that intensive assault merges with mellower essences of voice and flirtatious enterprise, all the time though building up to further predacious crescendos. The track devours and excites with every twist and turn of its imagination fuelled tempest, evolving its musical and physical grudge with an invasive seduction for something akin to a volatile mix of Society 1, Korn, and Combichrist.