Brood of Hatred – The Golden Age
Release Date: 25th February 2022
Label: Gruesome Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Post-Metal, Progressive Death Metal, Doom.
FFO: Gaerea, Cult of Luna.
Review By: Andy Spoon
It is always refreshing to see objectively good music come from those places in the world, whether geographically, or societally, that we do not initially associate with a thriving metal scene. Muhammad Melki has sought to bring his own fresh interpretation to genre-bending post metal from Tunisia, a nation (let alone part of the world) not commonly-associated with any metal acts of renown. Boldly, Melki has managed to offer his third studio album, The Golden Age, as a concept album full of atmosphere and drama to mix it up with industry giants like River of Nihil and Cult of Luna.
You’d be hard-pressed to think of any other metal acts from Tunisia at this time, making Brood of Hatred somewhat of an island in their own part of the world. Nevertheless, that doesn’t take away from the quality of the material that Melki has created for The Golden Age. Swirling with melodramatic musical phrasing, the entirety of The Golden Age is a love letter to atmosphere, giving the listener a giant wall of sound to sort through. Moments of dissonance are followed expertly with refrains and reprises of highly-coherent thematic elements.
Dynamics are highly-present, giving a nod to bands like Gaerea and Rivers of Nihil, allowing the music to avoid being a droning mass of heaviness, yielding to moments of reflection and pause, allowing the listener to stop and appreciate what just happened, or what is coming next. Few bands genuinely understand the necessity of holding back at strategic intervals for the purposes of making the listener “dance” back and forth with their attention. Melki clearly understands this element, his dynamic range between heaviness and poignant melodic overtones wonderfully-present on the album’s third track, Genesis.
Drums are fast and clearly inspired by the fury and speed of recent death metal, at least while the tempo is on the “up” setting. Guitars are more restrained, most tracks having clean or delayed sounds with headroom to spare, giving the giant, hollow, sound that is so-commonly associated with post rock to layer on top of the heavier rhythm sections. Beneath the clean guitars is a driving, chugging, but still transparent heavier guitar that avoids getting tuned beneath the level of chord clarity, giving musicality to the heavier sections.
Melki’s vocals are one of the points which I feel could have used some more attention. The range and clarity which he has leaves little doubt that his sound is organic. However, I found that sometimes, it gave me some disappointment in some parts, not matching the tone and drama of the musical phrases over which he recorded. This is the exact same thing that had come up with the most recent album by Archspire, an album that could have been utterly perfect if the vocals weren’t just so monotonous and repetitive over the whole album. I wish there would be more pitch variation and vocal techniques across the 8 tracks to give the listener some more of those same lights-out dynamics that the instrumental section so-expertly offers.
You can hear some of those alternative vocal stylings in The Mask Of Death, a track where Melki layers a clean vocal section behind the harsher scream/fry vocals to emphasize the musical phrase’s repetition. This offers some evidence that Brood of Hatred absolutely has the right stuff when putting these tracks together. I just wished at some places in the record that he could have sealed the deal with his voice as the “final instrument” to turn the mere atmosphere into something much more. The Golden Age has the chops to transcend being “just atmospheric” and reach levels of juicy goodness that Gaerea reached in 2020 with a similar musical mission.
Nevertheless, as an artist from a country without an outrageously-competitive metal scene, Brood of Hatred absolutely kills it with this album. Shortcomings aside, I would absolutely like to dive deeper into this band’s discography, as well as look forward to more from core artist Muhammad Melki, someone I hope people give notice in 2022, as The Golden Age has absolutely earned its place next to bigger acts, if only through its competence alone. 
(4 / 5)
