Withered - Memento Mori
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Artist: WitheredEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-09-20
Music Label: Lifeforce Records
Free Music Notes for Memento Mori
Free Music Review: Very immense, intense, innovative, & impressive
Hit: 4 Stars
Withered are one of extreme metal's best, brightest, and most talented, confident, and promising new prospects. Thus, even though they were under contract with Lifeforce records when their debut was released, it makes perfect sense that this Georgia-based quartet would go on to sign with Prosthetic Records (home to such rapidly rising talents as Gojira, Neuraxis, and Beneath the Massacre.) Withered are also indisputably one of extreme metal's most unique and innovative bands. That aforementioned debut, 2005's pulverizing "Memento Mori," is a monstrous amalgam of (more-or-less) all things heavy: sludge, doom, crust, grindcore, American death metal, Swedish-inspired melodeath, black metal, hardcore, thrash, prog, and post metal. In the end, this album falls somewhere between fellow Georgians Mastodon, High On Fire, Neurosis, Isis, Dismember, In Flames, Napalm Death, Strapping Young Lad, Dissection/1349, Black Sabbath, Meshuggah, Grave, Suffocation, and Dillinger Escape Plan.
This is one highly technical, unrelenting, earth-scorching tsunami of an album. Opener "It's All Said" begins with a Napalm Death-esque blur of instruments (it sounds like everybody in the band is soloing all at once), followed by a racing tempo that's absolutely breakneck. Sure, the band toss in an impressive stop-on-a-dime tempo change (thus sending the song into a really doomy dirge), but it's not long before the onslaught commences with frantic, searing, lightning fast guitar leads and superbly deft, pounding, crashing drums. "Within Your Grief" is a much more subdued follow-up with longer and more extended breaks, a sluggish drum beat, some tasty melodic soloing, and it's all anchored by a prominently grumbling bass line.
"Like Locusts" is the epic, eight-minute third track that goes through numerous complex tempo/mood shifts. It begins with a bit of repetitive, calmly-strummed strings before the rest of the band inevitably storm onto the scene with lots of forceful, pummeling (and almost devastating) blast beats and grindcore-worthy vocals. The song proceeds to grind to almost a complete stop a ways in, and stays in a dark breakdown a la My Dying Bride (highlighted by ominous guitar feedback, reverberating drums, neat guitar melodies, and a dirtily distorted bass bottom end) for about a minute. But then "Like Locusts" storms back as strong as ever with churning riffs, energetic drumming, and mean, dirty, unintelligible growls. Following that, "Silent Grave" is a brutal, straightforward, foundation shaking, ear hair-singing blitzkrieg of scalding, 1349-style tremolo picking, and maniacally screamed hardcore vocals. Track six, "Fear and Pain That Cripples Me," follows suit later on.
The really moody and doomy fifth track, "Beyond Wrath," features several minutes of long, drawn-out, instrumental sections that are comparable to the likes of Mastodon and Isis. It builds on its own momentum and gains speed and density to the point where the song is almost blindingly fast. Lastly, "Among Sorrow" is a wonderful, nine-minute-long set closer that begins with a bone-chilling intro before launching into whiplash speeds with gobs of frenetic, driving, slamming skins and freakish, creepy spoken-word vocals. "Among Sorrow" is so unpredictable that until it eventually ends with a nice, atmospheric, outro, the listener is never really certain which direction the song will go next. It actually feels like you're being tied between ten rockets, each of which is going in a different direction. Good stuff.
Bare in mind that with an only seven song and thirty-six minute running time, "Memento Mori" is a fairly short album. That aside, however, this is a very memorable, expansive, intelligent, remarkable, meticulous, enjoyable, well-written, and crushingly heavy debut. And if there's any justice left in the world, Withered will soon get the worldwide attention and success that they so desperately deserve (be on the lookout!). After all, they might still be a bit young, but they are already firing on all cylinders. Very impressive, indeed!
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