[schema type=”review” name=”Deadpressure – Deadpressure” description=”Label: Carbonized Records” author=”Sarp Esin” pubdate=”2018-10-31″ ]
The world of grindcore is an interesting one, in that bands have to live and die by their instant impact. Indeed, one of the genre’s staples is making entire songs the length of some other genre songs’ introductory passages. Microsongs that last only a few seconds aren’t uncommon, but given the intensity and speed of the songs, making an impact as soon as possible is a priority. That’s why you can normally go through two or more grind albums in the time it would take you to listen to, say, a death metal album.
Deadpressure’s self-titled debut is a prime example how grind albums are put together. At 13 tracks, it stands at just 21 minutes.
Good, because Deadpressure play grindcore. Plain and simple.
You get your hardcore punk riffs, blast beats and dbeats aplenty, fast-paced (for the most part) songs, indecipherable screams and short song lengths. The production is a bit thin. Yes, I understand that for a grind album, this is not a big deal because grind production is often skewed. However here, with the lifeless, barely-audible kicks, the powerless snare and the overall muffled sound doesn’t do the band any favors. While I don’t prefer my grind bass-heavy, the amount of low-pass filtering on this makes everything sound lifeless and faint. The vocals being a bit too far back is also a negative, especially since they are your typical screams. It robs the album of whatever impact it might’ve had quite comprehensively.
The thing Deadpressure suffer from is songwriting. The songs rely on tried, true but tired grind tropes. This is especially grating when songs start ending the same way, with a slowing down of the music. This trick is old hat, and beating this dead horse more than once on any given grind album is up there with the sin of relying too heavily on blastbeats to carry an album. First time you hear it, Aging Sludge, it’s nice. But then it comes up again not two songs later on Transmutations, and you get the feeling that you have heard it before. It happens again on the next song and stretches it out quite unnecessarily. I don’t know about you, but while there are only so many ways to end a song, relying on this almost three times in a row is uninspired.
That’s the main problem of Deadpressure. The whole album is a sleepwalk. It’s unremarkable. You don’t get anything out of it that you can’t get elsewhere, and often better. There is nothing terribly addictive or even attention-grabbing about the proceedings. I’d recommend this if you are a grindcore addict or want to hear everything with the label “grind” attached. Otherwise, look elsewhere.
Line-Up:
Seneca Norberg – Guitar/Vocals
Colin Tarvin – Bass Guitar
Cris Rodriguez – Drums
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Tracklist: 01. Desolate 02. Dwell 03. Secret Name Game 04. The Snake and The Sheppard 05. Aging Sludge 06. Crushed 07. Transformations 08. United Waste 09. Assailant’s Curse 10. A Light Unseen 11. Paradigm 12. Disappear 13. Weed and Flood |
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