Violent Life Violent Death – Break.Burn.End
Release Date: 15th September 2023
Label: Innerstrength Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Metallic Hardcore
FFO: Hatebreed, Every Time I Die, Zao, A Life Once Lost, Ringworm.
Review By: Jeff Finch
It’s a fairly safe bet that when someone puts on their favorite song or album, they receive some sort of emotional response in exchange: whether it’s the feeling of nostalgia from a song from their youth or the feeling of wanting to headbang and mosh, for example, there is a strong connection to the music. This new Violent Life Violent Death, over the course of a brief 24 minutes, is no different. Except, when partaking, its listeners may get the overwhelming urge to literally fistfight Mt Everest then scale the damn thing in victory because, whether you fit into the first, second, or last emotional response, one thing is clear; with Break.Burn.End, Violent Life Violent Death has released one of the most intensely heavy albums of 2023.
That this reviewer is in the last emotional response category should give some indication as to how heavy and lethal this record is. As mentioned prior, it is merely 24 minutes long, spread out over 10 tracks, rarely giving a listener the time to take a breath: between the dual guitar attack generating a mammoth chug, the drums alternating between double bass, complex fills, and just getting the everloving hell beat out of them, and throat shredding, vitriolic shrieks, this album is an aural onslaught from start to finish.
We start off with a brief monologue from the show Outer Range, from the great Josh Brolin, on opener Weapon of Pain, guitar slowly building in a controlled fury, percussion kicking in, music overtaking the spoken word, before vocalist Scott Cowan unleashes his venomous screech. If you are a fan of Zao, Cowan’s vocals are pure perfection, in that they (at least to this listener) resemble the great Dan Weyandt, unrelenting in their intensity and vicious delivery. Having said that, the track is pure, unfiltered groove, meant to pummel anything into submission lest it get in the way and try to stop. The pace rarely leaves mid-tempo, outside of the double bass, but the guitars chug so hard behind the acerbic vocals that one doesn’t need speed to feel the heat, they just need to open their ears and let the power flow through them.
Songs range from mid-tempo chug-fests to straight up thrash, switching up the pace at the drop of a hat, the guitars continually berating us with downtuned, aggressively heavy riffs, the drums unforgiving in their magnitude, the bass rumbling along, keeping everyone in check, while Cowan literally does not let up an ounce. Vocally, this album may be the most aggressive thing you’ll hear all year; rarely does he let up from his high shriek, but when he does, such as on standout track Maintain the Quiet, the man sounds like a demon straight from the bowels of hell, unleashing his low end as the riffs are slowed to near doom pace, undoubtedly one of the heaviest moments of the entire album, purely hellacious, threatening to drag its listeners to the depths while it crushes their chest cavity into oblivion.
Conversely, Devastation on the Tip of the Tongue is a barrage of unfettered thrashy fury, unrelenting before a hard hitting breakdown, half tempo drumming, one guitarist shredding, the other maintaining the chugging groove, bass rumbling, Cowan the standout, as his caustic cries burrow their way into our ears, sinister in intent and unforgiving in intensity.
Closer Come Armageddon feels like an amalgamation of the entire album. Blast beats, throat shredding, tempo shifts, it’s all there to give us a parting farewell: the imploring cries of ‘Come Armageddon’ as the pace is slowed, before picking right back up multiple times over the runtime, is a roller coaster of heaviness, almost as if Armageddon is truly staring a listener in the face, as the drums fade, leaving only the two guitars and Cowan monotonically calling out ‘Come Armageddon,’ imploring some higher power to end it all, before it all goes to black and ends, 24 minutes of fury in the books.
That the band can pull off such stark contrasts in heaviness and never once sound forced is a testament to the incredible talent on display; this album shows listeners that there is more than one way for music to beat someone into submission, and it’s very possible that Violent Life Violent Death checked them all off, because this album is undoubtedly one of the finest pieces of metal one is likely to hear all year. What the band does on Break.Burn.End is almost poetic; they take some of the heaviest music that is likely to be put to record this year, and then they proceed to break us down, burn everything in their path, and before one knows what hit them, end. Any fan of Zao or metallic hardcore, in general, absolutely needs this album in their rotation, no questions asked.
(4.5 / 5)
