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Dead Shape Figure: The grand karõshi
05/05/09 || Kampfar
Dead Shape Figure hail Vantaa as home, a Finnish town you’ve never heard of, and what they are up to is thrash with a modern edge. Not some fucking cyber shit or anything, but here is some more background info before explaining their exact behavior. They formed in 2003, are signed to Season Of Mist, and “The grand karõshi” is their debut full-length, one preceded by a couple of demos and an EP only. Fuck that, what I want to talk about is the rather odd album-title, one word of it, that is. Namely karõshi, which is a Japanese word, term, whatever the fuck, put on the death-certificate of those Japs who venture into the nothingness due to dying of overwork. Very not interesting perhaps, but this hill-billy piece of white-thrash happen to love tenacious gooks, and I don’t give a space traveling fuck about your opinions, so I did the mention away.
So, what exactly is thrash with a modern edge, you might wonder, and I sort of do to. See, new thrash is what Darkane is up to, or so I’ve been told, and this Finnish band with a crap moniker sounds quite modern, though not like the gullible Swedes all that often. Hmm, I guess this god damned modernity I’m raving on about is due to a very good production, punch-y and not too polished, but also impressive instrumental skills must take large parts of the blame. Yep, they are damn good at their instruments, but fortunately this bunch of Ukko worshipers don’t use their skills to jack humongous amounts of jizz into your ears. Put a pretto way, the songs are in focus, not attempts at flabbergastery.
And, this being thrash and all, the songs are of course delivered in an up-beat and rushed manner. It’s a simple formula indeed, but when sprinkled with break-downs, fine solos, a general attention to detail, blablabla, it needn’t turn out shit at all. Add to this a vocalist with power in his chords, one able to do the music justice, and you have, if not a classic, at least a fucking semi-winner. A less cynic troll than me would perhaps even say undisputed winner. In other words, there are people out there who’ll enjoy this (even) more than I diddley do.
I do not, however, approve of the album-ender, “Perinde ac cadaver”, and that because it feels out of context and disconnected from the rest. They had the brains to put it at the end, kudos and bravo, but they shouldn’t have bothered making it at all.
So, not a revolutionary good album, but all in all a fine one.
7 out 10.
- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Season Of Mist
- Website: www.deadshapefigure.fi
- Band
- Galzi Kallio: vocals
- Juhani Flinck: guitar
- Kride Lahti: guitar
- Neissu: bass
- Mohkis: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Intro
- 02. Blades
- 03. Lesser the man
- 04. Bend the weak
- 05. Remington Lucifer
- 06. Fight against. Lie Behalf
- 07. Blithering icon
- 08. Karõshi – From contempt to obliteration
- 09. 6 × 9
- 10. Perinde ac cadaver
