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Exhale: Blind
05/05/10 || Khlysty
I think that, if I look carefully, I will surely find somewhere inside the Holy Bible that the Moses’ Law contained eleven, and not only ten, Commandments, the lost one being “Thou shalt not create a grind record that lasteth over three-times-ten minutes”. I can easily understand the reason for this decree: not one metalhead –even the most jaded of the type- would really want to listen to more than half an hour of hyper-fast blasts, screams, blurred downtuned guitar lines and general dementia.
Anyway, Exhale, a death metal-informed grind band from Sweden, manages to cram 15 bursts of aggression –ranging from some seconds to three minutes- into a 29-minute-long record. As I said, these guys pepper their almost-trad grind fare with some interesting death metal elements, like solid drumming that, even though fast, never enters the realm of amorphous gurgle, some super-moshable breakdowns and distinguishable downtuned riffing that avoids the pitfall of sounding like a horny machine.
What I probably like the most about Exhale is the fact that the songs in “Blind” are distinguishable from one another. Even though the twin vocal attack –a throat-ripping scream and a serviceable death grunt- started getting on my nerves before the record ended, it’s obvious that the band put brains and effort into making this album. The songs, although generally brief, are fully-formed and pretty linear in their evolution, thus avoiding the problem of sounding like formless mush, as is pretty often the case with grind bands. Also, the production is double-ace, managing to be rawer than a festering wound and as in-your-face-up-your-ass as possible, at the same time.
Look, let’s cut beating around the bush: this is good grind. If you know grind and you know good grind, you’re gonna like Exhale. A lot. If you don’t know or don’t like grind, there’s a small possibility that the effort the band made to keep the songs as user-friendly as possible will make you change your mind about the subgenre. Or, else, you might just like Exhale. Me, I like ‘em and I urge you to do the same.
- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Dark Balance
- Website: www.exhaleswe.com
- Band
- Peter: screams
- Johan Ylenstrand: guitar, grunts
- Andreas Allenmark: guitar
- Johan Fogelberg: bass
- Gustav “Gurra” Elowson: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Edge
- 02. World of hate
- 03. Anger
- 04. Turning blind
- 05. Propaganda
- 06. Sick addiction
- 07. Scream
- 08. Fools
- 09. Crushed
- 10. Swallow
- 11. Parasiter
- 12. Humanism
- 13. Paperwings
- 14. Erased
- 15. Spy tillbaka
