PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
.@Planetmosh reviews Forth To The Fight, @IrishMetalArch’s compilation of unsigned acts.
To me a split showcasing unsigned Irish bands should give you a taste of bands and leave you wanting to hear more. ‘Forth to the Fight’ is a little half and half. There are some really good songs poorly produced and some really poor songs really well recorded.
First up are Zylum (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zylum/165102227011603), a four piece from Tipperary. Taking doom tempos and riffs and a helping of industrial sounds and approach, their opening track ‘Shadows Call’ also starts the album: its 2 ½ minutes of an intro that really doesn’t serve the album as it doesn’t really go anywhere. The only place it goes is into a clunky riffed number ‘Isolated’ which has a really good song buried beneath but to me it just sounds like a demo of a few ideas hashed together. With some work it could be a really strong song.
‘Only Death is real’ is the track the album should have started with. It’s a great Paradise Lost/ Type O Negative style song with conviction and great arrangement. The vocals really come to play and the band develops an identity. More along the lines of this song would see the band doing very well indeed.
As a complete swerve ball, Northern Ireland death thrashers Mausoleum (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mausoleum/163337223682430)hit out straight away with their Carcass vs. Six Feet Under brand of groove and ferocity. ‘Dissipate’ sounds like it was written to get a crowd going. The vocals have determination, the guitar work is great and the rhythm section lay down a solid base. This follows onto ‘God Of Hellfire’, which sounds immense I must say. Just sheer death metal groove, pure and simple. ‘Violence in Remedy’ follows on with more of the same which i great because the band sound like they have a real direction and a definite sound that they want to go with. They finish off with ‘Murders of Wild Goose Lodge’ – a great song about a group of 100 men who burned down the Wildgoose Lodge in Louth killing eight people including a baby.
Next up are Deus Mortuus (https://www.facebook.com/deus.mortuus.info): the songs they included sound really good, but the quality of the recording I was given was very poor and distracted from what was actually happening. Hopefully the physical CD has the higher quality recordings. From what I could make out though, the vocals are very strong the songs are well written and to be honest I never would have thought an eight minute death metal opus would keep my attention but ‘Judgement of the Dead’ did. Definitely one band I’d really like to see in the flesh.
Íweriú (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Íweriú/182510758457647) have included just the one song, but at 20 minutes long ‘Pláinéid Ailíniú’ is a hell of a track to try and comprehend never mind describe – though is similar to listening to Pig Destroyer’s ‘Natasha’: a vast desolate haunting soundscape, it’s quite an experience and well worth a listen if you are looking for something experimental and harsh.My overall verdict: hit and miss but when it hits it hits hard.
Notable tracks: ‘God of Hellfire’, ‘Pláinéid Ailíniú’, ‘Judgement of the Dead’.
‘Forth To The Fight’ is released by Irish Metal Archive and available from http://irishmetalarchive.bigcartel.com/product/forth-to-the-fight-irish-split-cd
Review by Ross McDermott.
