### Offending: Age of perversion

#### 10/10/12 || Averatu

For a very long time I thought The Young Gods was the only French band worthy of my precious listening time, and they’re not even metal, or from France, they just sometimes sing in French. But in the recent past I’ve come across a few acts that have forced me to change my opinion. And here again we have an album that scores one for the Frogmen!! And now that I have the obligatory xenophobic stereotype out of the way, lets proceed.

Offending seem to be a hybrid of predominantly thrash and death with a mild hint of groove and a dash ‘o black. This is a familiar recipe used by many bands of our little genre, with varied success. But the frog men seem to have found a very interesting balance of all these elements and have given it a fairly slick modern sound without compromising their underground roots, and a French band named Offending with a vocalist who calls himself ‘Jesus aka the Butcher’ cant go wrong.

The intro already sets the stage for an interesting listen, almost straying into Uncerate’esqu a-tonal harmony territory. I’ve come to HATE (yes K, its all in capitals, and its bold) album intros, pick a sub genre, they’re all the same, usually a complete waste of a track or 2 minutes of a song, but this intro alone gets 10/10. Now just watch every other band do exactly the same intro.

The rest of this album is a very well produced/recorded/performed collection of interesting hook-infested songs, and it seems to me that Offending have reached with their second album what takes most bands a decade to achieve, I’d put them in the same league as Allegaeon, although the 2 bands sound nothing alike (in fact that could make for quite a gig). I very much like the interaction of the guitars. So many times I get frustrated listening to a band with 2 guitarists, playing the same riffs, well I say just remove the extraneous member and bi-amp your guitarist. There are some mild fret-wanker solo’s found here and there, but not to the point of annoyance.

The lamest part of the album is the cover art. I expected to hear some lame old-school dm rehash! Instead I was sandblasted in the face by this shreding thrashfest.

- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Deepsend Records
- Website: www.offending.fr
- Band
- Jesus the Butcher: vocals
- Groploi: guitars
- Manu: guitars
- Yoni: bass
- Vincent Roubière: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Infested by his burden
- 02. Within this world
- 03. Modern enslavement
- 04. Dominion xxi
- 05. Religion depravity
- 06. Age of perversion
- 07. Hopeless submission
- 08. Raped by religion
- 09. Devotion