I love Grindcore. I also hate Grindcore most of the time as the genre is built on throwing a lot of shit at you as fast as possible, and because of this no other genre showcases a lack of songwriting skills as brutally. Enter Terra Builder‘s debut album, where the band’s promotional text states that they have made something not quite done before by combining Deathgrind with Sludge. If you just asked yourself how that could work you might already know where this is going. Solar Temple is a 33 minute ride through Death Metal riffs (sometimes sounding like standard Altarage riffs, yes, friendly Bandcamp FFO-text) and Black Metal riffs that crawl between three to four minutes for each song. Occasionally Full Of Hell comes to mind, like in “Interplanetary Portal”, and the album cover really does look to fit that style in the first place. The material on Solar Temple does not really come close to touching the character that those two bands possess, however. At its best, Solar Temple has some novel ideas: the title track combines a Morbid Angel sounding riff with Grindcore intensity and “Dead Celestial” features a tremolo riff throughout that works well with the forward charging groove. “Abyss” has a breakdown that starts off a new tremolo riff leading to a decent finish to the song. The impact of it is a bit cheapened as this trick is repeated in “Total Overcome”, however.
There are ideas scattered throughout these songs, but the music is mostly uniform even when the different modes of riffs are switched around. The riffs on the album do not markedly stand out as anything new either in composition or performance. Of course, an album does not have to do anything new to be worth it, it could get by with just doing something old really well. From a songwriting standpoint at least, Terra Builder have a long way to go convincing me they can manage either of these two paths. Making your debut Grindcore album 33 minutes is not a good idea unless you can stuff it with as many ideas as say, Wormrot (though even those legends had some trouble with the flow on Hiss). Listening to Solar Temple, I get the feeling that the Sludge is working against the flow of the songs. The crawling riffs make the songs feel like they are stuck in the mud and then the songs end. To make this work, each genre needs to be utilized for its strengths and to be fair, the best songs on Solar Temple manage to show a bit of potential. I will give the band that it is a novel idea but it is also one that they should explore more properly if they want to make something that stands out. Solar Temple might sate someone looking for Deathgrind with an exotic spice sprinkled over for a spin or two, but I doubt Terra Builder will be a name they recall one month past the debut.