(Andy Synn has three more prime cuts of British beef to share with you today)
Look, I know I’ve titled this series of columns the “Best of British”, but I’ll admit that that’s not always the case… sometimes the artists/albums I feature here are just “good”, rather than “great”, and it’s more about me just wanting to write about them, and get you to listen to them, rather than literally claiming they’re the “best”.
Today, however, I really do have three excellent example of the “Best of British” for you, courtesy of Scordatura (Death Metal), Temple Guard (Metallic Hardcore), and Urzah (Post-Metal).
SCORDATURA – LED INTO OBLIVION
It’s been a long six years since Scordatura‘s last record (2020’s Mass Failure), so I’ll forgive you – even though we’ve covered the band pretty extensively over the years – if you’re not as familiar with their particular brand of bone-breaking, gut-wrenching, neck-wrecking Death Metal as perhaps you should be.
Building on the Dying Fetus/Defeated Sanity/Cannibal Corpse influenced approach of their previous album(s), Led Into Oblivion finds the group in an even more vicious, even more lethally efficient, mode – the only slight bit of fat on these brutal bones being the somewhat unnecessary intro track, “Doomed to Fate” – that sits at the sweet spot between Technical Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal, and Death Grind.
At the band’s best, songs like outstanding opener “Led Into Oblivion” and “Oppressed Repressed” recall the eye-popping intensity of Benighted and/or Cephalic Carnage at their nastiest (and blastiest), all propulsive drums, convulsive riffs, and utterly repulsive vocals that come spraying and splattering out of the speakers like gore from a severed neck-stump.
Even better, there are moments here and there – moments like the twitchy, string-skipping riffs and stomping staccato rhythms of “Existential Termination”, the humongous, hulking grooves of “Echoes of a Fractured Mind”, and the unexpectedly moody, deviantly pseudo-melodic “A Manic Indoctrination” – which recall prime-cut Cattle Decapitation just before their big break-through, while the pure riffosity of second-half highlight “Retali(H)ate” simultaneously recalls both Wormed and early Whitechapel (and I do mean that in a good way).
That’s not to say, of course, that Scordatura don’t have their own voice – and what a voice it is, with frontman Daryl Boyce’s vomitous variety of groans and growls, screams and snarls, being more than a match for almost anything from the Truchan/Ryan/de Caluwe triumvirate – but it’s clear that on Led Into Oblivion they’re not afraid to challenge the big dogs at their own game.
Sure, the album’s brutish brevity is sometimes both a strength and a weakness – certain parts, like the climactic crush of “Begging to Die” might actually have benefitted from being allowed to really stretch and flex their muscles a bit more – but there’s no question that, even after six years of silence, these Scottish savages are still capable of bringing it… and bringing it hard.
TEMPLE GUARD – CITADEL IN FLAMES
It’s no secret that I love being in my band… but if I had to be in another band I think I’d probably want it to be someone like Temple Guard.
Somehow both heftier and hookier than their previous album (2022’s Spear of the Revenant) while also being tighter, tauter, and just altogether tougher, Citadel in Flames features eight obnoxiously heavy slabs of Death Metal influenced Metallic Hardcore – think Arkangel/Integrity/Merauder meets Obituary/Dyscarnate/Misery Index – that aren’t afraid to wear their politics or philosophy out loud and proud.
Of course, you don’t have to be all those things to appreciate what the band do (I’m certainly not, though I’m definitely in favour of bringing back the guillotine) as the sheer power of tracks like the chugging, churning, charred-to-the-bone firestorm that is “Blood Makes the Rain Fall” (which, as it happens, features a gravel-throated guest spot from Karl Buechner himself) and the Heaven Shall Burn-esque pummelling of “A Vanguard Reforged” speaks for itself.
That being said, the way the heaving, heretical grooves of “Inquisition’s Wrath” fit perfectly with the song’s central message about the horrors of oppressive religious dogma (“Did commodified guilt drive you back inside stone houses of chosen lies?“) or the way lines like “Nature’s hand of justice reaches forth, not for reconciliation but for a reckoning“cut through so viciously and viscerally during riff-tastic, pro-environment, anti-oligarchy anthem of “Masked Resistance”, demonstrate that the band’s fusion of message and music has lost none of its bitterness or bite.
Yes, I’m pretty sure the seething, surging, stomping strains of “Iron Sultanate” are just about Trench Crusade (showcasing the fact that the band aren’t just po-faced killjoys), and, yes, they’re not afraid to very occasionally take their foot off the accelerator to let things breathe and brood a little (in fact I’d love to hear more moments from them like the unexpectedly poigning and introverted penultimate section of “The Weight of Undying Shame” in the future), but none of that takes away from the absolutely stunning impact or intensity of this album, which is guaranteed to still be a firm favourite of mine (and hopefully yours) come the end of the year.
URZAH – A TRANQUIL VOID
Last time I wrote about Urzah I called their debut album, The Scorching Gaze, “one of the best, and most promising, debuts of the year” and it seems like a lot of you agreed with me… so it should please you to know that their highly-anticipated follow-up, A Tranquil Void, not only doubles down on what made its predecessor so great but also seeks to expand the scope and scale of the band’s sound even further.
I’ll grant you that this is, in some ways, a bit of a double-edged sword – and I’ll get to why shortly – but seeing and hearing the band embrace the philosophy of “go big, or go home”, in a way which ensures that there are none of the occasional lulls which were the only slight mark against their previous record, only reinforces this idea that Urzah continue to be one of the brightest new (or new-ish) stars of the UK Metal scene.
Songs like “At the Mouth of the Cave” and “The Call Beneath” continue to follow in the footsteps of much-loved (and recently reactivated) Hardcore-influenced Post-Metal legends Burst – all punchy riffs and proggy rhythms, topped off with a rivetingly raw and rough-edged vocal performance from frontman Ed Fairman – but whereas their Swedish siblings, in their latter years at least, tended to balance their nervous aggression with a dose of nuanced introspection, Urzah seem to have increased the level of Converge-esque intensity this time around.
That’s not to say that A Tranquil Void doesn’t have its moments of, well, tranquility – the simmering, slow-burn second half of “Hunter in the Veil” in particular allows both the band and the listener a chance to rest before the album’s epic, twelve-and-a-half minute ender – but it’s the density of sound, not just simple heaviness but rich sonic and emotional weight, which really stays with you when listening to this record.
And while the more ambitious scale of the group’s songwriting does sometimes expose a few flaws in their armour – which strains at the seams a little to properly accommodate the sublime, clean-sung strains of “Bark and Branches” (that perhaps would have worked better woven into a larger composition) and the showboating “In the Mouth of the Wolf” (which is almost a little too Mastodon for its own good) – when all the pieces line up (most notably on the tumultuous two-parter “Infernal Star” and the ebbing, flowing expanse of aforementioned closer “Entwined…”, the latter of which might just be the best thing they’ve ever done) the band’s vision for what they could be becomes strikingly clear.