(April of this year brought the debut EP from the Colombian death metal band T-800, and today we bring you DGR‘s review of it.)
There is an art to taking things at face value when it comes to music sometimes. All one needed to do was glance at Colombia’s newly formed death metal act T-800 and its constituent pieces to know that this would not be some big, world-changing event in music. Instead, and purely based off of how the group are constructed out of their local scenes in various other brutal death, slam, and even one tech-death and deathcore band, to know that T-800 are likely going to be about as rock stupid as it comes in death metal.
That is, of course, if you hadn’t already caught the Terminator homage in the name or song titles, or the fact that the artwork for their newest EP Antihuman goes with the classic pile of skulls, zombies, and mutilation for its overall motif. There’s not going to be anything progessive in the mission statement of Antihuman. This is death metal in a form about as thick-headed as it could come… and sometimes that is what you need.
There are, of course, many in-depth and philosophical discussions to be had about the wider appeal of the Terminator franchise and particularly within the world of heavy metal. We could discuss the lasting appeal of Arnold himself and how the sort of muscle-bound machismo imagery that was cultivated in the 1980s has been a constant font of inspiration in the world of heavy metal, even when the man himself seems content to live quietly and raise animals these days.
We could discuss how many bands will use the subject matter pertaining to the Terminator films as a sort of mask to veil their critique of overall society, dressed in the gore and limbs of a futuristic cyborg warfare and destruction of humanity. Hell, the destruction of humanity by Skynet itself has been deconstructed, reconstructed, and portrayed across multiple albums in death metal alone. Even taking things steps further on a purely conceptual level you have groups like Wormed, wherein an event like that would take place within one song of their nano-molecular grey-goo apocalypse galactic nuclear scenario.
These would all be fantastic discussions to have. We could also discuss whether or not the fence post in the backyard moved a few inches over within the past month and whether or not its time to re-do the section holding it into the ground. Either way, you could use T-800‘s Antihuman as a launching point for both, because the group’s first EP otherwise is ten minutes of straightforward, gravel-chewing brutality.
Songs like the titular “T-800”, “Antihuman”, and “Artificial Intelligence” are all built to press a listener flat. Constructed out of rapidly shifting and flame-throwing guitar riffs, these are brutal death metal classics being flayed and draped over endoskeleton. Rather than treating it as three complete experiences, Antihuman blurs the line such that they’re almost one monstrous song. While T-800 won’t be in the running for any Nobel peace prizes or artistic awards with the music present here, it is about as concretely heavy as you could want from a group with an aesthetic defined such as this.
Around the one-minute mark of “T-800“, before the song descends into absolute death metal chaos, there are some fantastic cymbal catches in order to kick off of the affair. The song otherwise swirls around an Earth-heaving growl that rarely finds a need to shift beyond a throat-frying low even as the song gets increasingly jagged to close things out. Lyrically the band are drawing multiple analogies to current worldwide situations, recontextualizing them as the lead-up to the aforementioned robot apocalypse, which is an interesting way to pull things away from the usual “we’re using a movie as a source of inspiration so we’re just gonna describe the movie”.
A project like T-800 drifting across the metaphorical work desk is usually a source of private amusement. These are the sorts of bands where you’re required to be one hundred percent bought in, otherwise even the slightest crack in the armor is going to make you look lame. T-800 are immensely heavy for the about-eleven minutes of Antihuman, and while a line could not be drawn more straight in terms of how T-800 are shooting when it comes to their brand of death metal, sometimes you just need a quick hit of something that could knock down a wall by staring at it.
This is one of the reasons why the hybridization of deathgrind works so well, because you can land on real sloppy, abbreviated death metal tracks that just sound immensely heavy and are like having a cannon fired through your front door to notify you that a package has arrived. T-800 are a band that could press cities flat with how they’re weilding the brutal death metal tree like a weapon all their own. Antihuman is not a revolution in music but it is a fun trip into auditory destruction instead.
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