Chton "Chtonian Lifecode" CD
[Retribute]
They may hail from Norway, but despite their locale and a visual aesthetic in line with the country's reputation for black metal, this is a death metal record through and through, with but a mere smattering of obscured black metal influences at best (in the form of a few discordant tremolo picked riffs). It's not bad either. The vocals are low growls in line with the classically brutal death metal style (occasionally layered with midrange screams for added texture), but the music is much more rhythmic and creative, layering a lot of dissonant notes/chords over chunky rhythms and old school death metal riffing, throwing around lots of tempo changes and quick shifts between riffs, etc. The end result sort of comes off as a blend of mid-period Morbid Angel and the more contemporary side of a band like Immolation or something like that (though the latter angle is more tangibly delivered here). A few of the tracks run a bit long at nearly five minutes or more, at times losing focus and getting somewhat tiring, but overall the record tends to flow well and keep the total running time right about where it should be. "Book of Black Earth" is the first of the shorter songs and definitely makes a mark as a result, "The Horror the Horror" has an excellent break midway through that's much slower and drops some killer discordant textures and unusual changeups, and "Crawling Chaos" is a shorter track with lots of dissonant chords and borderline chugga styled breaks. "Unholy Communion" opens slower with some nice melodic layers and uses hard-hitting midpaced chord progressions over subtle layers of near feedback for a slightly different vibe than the other tracks - more memorable, in my opinion - while "Hammered (Down)" closes the disc on a slightly more traditional note and still makes for a standout track with great songwriting and a few intricate details (Faint acoustic guitars, perhaps?). The last track is unlisted and basically consists of five minutes of experimental noise, so... it is what it is. I think the sound quality is pretty good as well. The bass doesn't play a particularly large role, and the drums could be a bit smoother to fill in the gaps behind the guitars slightly better, but the guitar tone is thick and crunchy, and the vocals are mixed perfectly against the music. It sounds fine for the most part, with a strong sense of clarity, and only minor tweaking would be needed to clean up around the edges. The design looks great here, using very little color and minimal imagery with some stylized skulls and nice text to keep it fairly clean but eye-catching. Lyrically things are pretty over the top, as one might expect, though perhaps more stripped down than is often the case: "Crawling through masses of corpses and limbs, Covered by blood from the innocent weak, Embraced by the darkness and left all alone, In the pure fucking chaos of cruel crushing war..." I wouldn't call this the most interesting death metal release out there right now, there are indeed some minor gaps in the songwriting that can fault the album, but there are enough nuances in the musicianship to draw some interest and point to a brighter future for the band (Hammered (Down) is simply an excellent song). If they keep pushing those limits I bet they'll do something pretty intriguing at some point. (7/10)
Running time - 42:43, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: Book of Black Earth, Unholy Communion, Hammered (Down)]
Retribute Records - http://www.retributerecords.com

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