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8.0
- Bands:
VOMITORY - Duration: 00:40:45
- Available from: 05/26/2023
- Label:
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sheet metal logs
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It’s nice to meet Vomitory again. We knew in our hearts that the reunion of the last few years, which initially started just to play a few concerts without high expectations, would sooner or later lead to a full-blown comeback. Maybe it took longer than expected, also because in between we all had to put up with the limitations related to the pandemic, but, in the end, here is the comeback record of the Swedish death metallers. In our hands, twelve years after the last publication of the quartet, “Opus Mortis VIII”, the new “All Heads Are Gonna Roll” immediately draws a smile from the title and the vulgar cover, but, fortunately, it soon ends up exalting even and above all for its musical content. After all, listening to a Vomitory record is a bit like going back to the house we grew up in and finding it almost identical, with all the things we left in place, in a comfortable stability just waiting to be disturbed. . For quite some time now, the band’s music has had its own radical identity that is not clouded by any real commitment, so much so that it moves along the lines of an admiration for everything rough and old school. With this, however, we do not mean that each essay of the original Karlstad quartet has always been identical to the one that preceded it: in fact it is evident how in the last years before the momentary breakup Vomitory have opened up to more formulas and influences – death of various kinds, thrash metal and grindcore- to take their old sound to more dynamic and enveloping registers. Leaving aside the constant blast-beat, in the second part of their career the group has packed excellent works, exploring unprecedented expressive codes and relaunching on several occasions an artistic path that at certain times seemed about to run aground and fall into oblivion. . With “All Heads…” the Swedes fortunately take up that profitable discourse, going back to grinding a death metal in which an expressive urgency can be sensed that cannot be dispensed with, listen after listen. Divided into ten songs, the album immerses its stylistic plot in those classic and angular sounds of old school death metal so dear to the band, but in its aggressive walk it ends up granting a pleasant breather by adopting several plots and different rhythmic solutions. In fact, there’s a little bit of everything on this comeback from the Vomitory brand: the typical meat grinder uptempos, vibrating with a new energy, but also darker, more monolithic episodes, as well as a couple of tracks where the thrash waves find space that seems to come out of the repertoire of the first Sepultura. Finally, let’s not forget the more pronounced d-beat/crust hardcore parentheses than ever: the single “Raped, Strangled, Sodomized, Dead” pierces the guts in a surge of emotion that is even reminiscent of fellow Wolfbrigade compatriots.
In short, a smart and well-cared tracklist showcasing only thoughtful pieces played with great ease by a line-up for whom the long break from the recording studio has certainly done them good. It connects you to the so-called golden years and at the same time lets fresh air into your lungs: it could hardly have been done better than this at this point in a very long career. Let’s go Vomitorio!
