(Andy Synn says get ready to turn off your brains and turn up the volume with Acranius)
It’s pretty well-established that we tend to favour music of the more cerebral and artistic type… while still, for the most part, being heavy as hell… here at NCS.
In fact, it’s almost become something of a running joke (just take a glance at any handful of my most recent reviews, such as the artful blackened beauty of Miserere Luminis, the abrasive, pitch-black anarchism of Trespasser, or the complex Prog-Tech contortions of Cryptic Shift) that the older we get the more “progressive” (or “pretentious”) our tastes are getting.
But there’s a time and a place for proggy pretensions and artsy indulgence… and this is not one of those times.
Brutal Death/Slam/Core bruisers Acranius have been making music designed purely for breaking bones and killing braincells – trust me, one listen to the Suffo-core Slam-Death of tracks like “Synchronized” and “Forced Dread” and you’ll want to get yourselves checked into concussion protocol ASAP – since 2011, and while they may have learned some new tricks along the way (even if not all their fans have been onboard with their increasing ‘core-wards drift) their music definitely hasn’t gotten any smarter.
Except, of course, that it has… after all, it takes real smarts to be this dumb this effectively (FYI, we don’t use “dumb” as an insult around these parts, merely as a shorthand for music which purposefully bypasses all your higher brain functions), and it especially takes a keen intellect (if not necessarily a particularly refined one) to keep hitting that same, primal sweet-spot over and over again without it getting stale or losing its impact.
Part of the reason for this, of course, is that Acranius know that brutality like this is best delivered in short, shocking chunks, and none of their last 3 albums have gone over the 35 minutes, with Whiteout taking this even further by not even crossing the 24 minute mark (indeed, all but 2 of its tracks, “A Vow Unspoken” and groove-heavy closer “Convoi”, are less than 3 minutes long).
But what it lacks in length it more than makes up for in girth… and the thick, meaty sound of tracks like the blasting, chugging, churning “Dogma” and the surprisingly agile, pugilistic “Counterlife” – all chunky, down-tuned guitars, beefy, bone-rattling bass-lines, and guttural, gurgling vocals – should provide all the necessary weight and heft that you’re craving (especially if you’re a fan of the similarly sick and nasty sounds of bands like Analepsy, Ingested, and early Whitechapel).
Sure, the album’s brevity means it might not necessarily fully satisfy those cravings – I know “less is more” guys, but perhaps a little more would have hit the spot a little better – but Whiteout is still a lean, mean, mercilessly heavy murder-machine that will undoubtedly leave you punch-drunk and ready for another round.