A great reality of Italian death metal: Humangles!
Active from 1996, but edit just from 2007 with the ep "Refoetalize" which brings us, through the other ep "Edge of beyond" (2008), to the full-length "Fractal" (2010).
A great sample of an impact death metal album with no compromises.
In 2012 they realize the excellent "Odd ethics", an old school blow right in the face!
Since from the first notes it releases an uncontrollable heat of headbanging.
Just to have an idea of the energy the listener can feel, think of the skull bashes under a stage!
To brass tacks, talk about the package to come to the music.
Great introduction with the cover: brief, monochrome, but with an heavy force (if something is simple it doesn't mean it's ordinary!).
The cover reflect the sense of the entire album that we're going to listen to!
All the artwork is great, trim, and lyrics, info and logo show up through an excellent mix between dark images and colours.
Let's talk about the songs!
Needles of the Blind-
starts with a narrated words which bring us in a very intelligent lyrics, not hackneyed and without genre's common stereotypes.
Then starts the music with an old death metal school riff, a violent headbanging with rises and falls as in old German school of Thrash (like Destruction/Sodom) or like old American glories (like Baphomet and Banished).
We've got Swinging rhythms between the verses since the apex at the end of the song.
In the chorused we can find both a very powerful and straight growl (without effects and frills) and a scratched scream (like the one in the 80's Thrash!).
Skinned, to Feel All
In the second song can find a perfect mix between the different genres mentioned before and a Doom\Hard Rock mood which reminds 70's band (and Cathedral too).
This mix made everything really original and groovy.
This song is both very rhythmical and old school.
We've got drum's rolls which bring us to a guitar insert that sounds as an attack!
This song is very listenable and will stay in your head for a long time!
It's very well balanced through speed stop & go!
Smells Acrid
The third song starts with a sound which remind us old Cannibal Corpse (Eaten Back to Life over all!), and the first second are like a foretoken of a frontal assault that pervade the entire album.
The slowdowns and the accelerated riffs are the trade mark of this song, which go forcefully 'till the end with an evil growl that brings down in hell, and with a cutting scream which frames evil guitar's parts that wound you!
The final guitar's riff brings us in Tampa (like Deicide of the namesake album).
A great scream!
Deny Your Creed
A great start for this song, a melodic part but in Thrash\Death style, that brings to the following one as an anteroom to the most absolutely and terrifying dark.
In this song we can find a whipping drum, great riffs, a powerful growl and scream that go together whit no mercy; as always with that mood as an old band accustomed to a no-stop sound of violence.
There are also great stop & go that framed the central verse.
In the final part the song because more 70's but always in a Thrash\Death style with a great conclusion just in their style!
Finally I just can say that's a great work!
The different songs are varied, refined in very old school style which goes from American Death Metal to most evil German Thrash (both, of course, in old school style!!!\m/).
A very well-respected platter that mix the "taste" of old Death concert (with skull bashes on the barriers) and Thrash parts (with rivers of beer in the name of Rock's god!).
A great acclaim to the lyrics too, because they're never hackneyed and they're able to reflect the social distress in these dark and shitty times (they're not ordinary, as I told before!) but always being bloody and violent as the genre command!
Also the sound and the mixing (...gently made by Dan Swan in Unisound Studios!!!) balanced in a very great way all the different parts which come from different influences.
In my opinion this Ep is just a foretoken of a new devastating full!!
After a listening like this you just can grind the jaws and prepare the auricles for a new wave of violence!
I can guess that in live shows these guys must be amazing, because with such a sound you can feel a river of adrenaline!
Nothing more to ay except for: put on your studded armbands and horns up!!!
Have a violent and powerful listening with Humangled!!! \m/
Review by Ichi & Valgore
