Massen – Gentle Brutality Review

A hazard of venturing into deeper waters of dissonance and the more extreme ends of Metal is that these genres have a hard time impressing on that end as they have to balance melody and heaviness. Despite this I still enjoy melody, groove and selectively catchy material but drift away from things that mix in overt aspects of Pop melody. Bands like Massen are instantly fighting an uphill battle for my interest, then. But impressively, this Belarus duo bring some serious skill to the format. Massenive skill.

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Infecting the Swarm – Pulsing Coalescence Review

Infecting the Swarm claims to make music for fans of Disentomb, Defeated Sanity and Euphoric Defilement. Neither Disentomb nor Defeated Sanity comparisons apply fully. Rather, I feel the best comparison is likely Spain’s Wormed, whose dissonant, almost machine-like Brutal Death Metal approaches texture in a Brutal Death Metal context similarly to how Infecting the Swarm do it.

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