Balatonizer hails from Palermo, Italy and this is their first and only
release so far, and so far, the conclusion of the fans is...MOLTO BENE!!
Finally, we have a shot of creativity in the death/grind genre. Yes,
they have the typical short songs, 32 of them in 25 minutes actually,
and yes, they have samples thrown into their songs, and yes, they use a
drum machine, but push all that aside and give this a listen and you'll
hear actual musical talent... in a grind band! Most bands in the genre lean solely on brutality and shock value, and
that's fine, it works, we like that. Balatonizer, however have infused
technical death metal into their 40 second burst tracks.
Driving
guitars, machine gun drum machine programming, and awesome growls. Very
low growls but also fast, which can be hard to do. The only problem
found here is in the production side of things, the sound is a little
muddy and the songs end very abruptly, like it was all one track and
somebody went in and decided, "Ok, this could be one song, I'll put a
space right here, and another here"... but they didn't do a very good
job of stopping one before the next started. This could have been done
much better. Really, it doesn't take away from the musical content;
it's a minor annoyance.
Another thing worth mentioning is their artwork. The booklet features a
comic book featuring the band as musclebound giants ripping the heads
off townspeople and encountering some sort of giant demon monster in a
cave, and stamped on the CD are several images of... hmm...which term
to use... let's say there's a lot of penises, some bodily fluids and
some women's mouths. Get the picture?
Great album, and on the verge of being essential for grind fans, brutal
death fans and for tech death fans who want a little more oomph in
their music.
Rate 8.8/10
By Kristina White
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