SHORT BUT SWEET: GENOCIDE PACT AND CAVEMAN CULT

 

I got a tip about the two releases featured in this post by NCS contributor KevinP. In this instance, I think he paired these recommendations because the two bands happen to be playing together on August 22 in Orlando, Florida, where Kevin lives (details here about the show). Sometimes he links me to music because he thinks I’ll like it, without commenting whether he likes it or not. I’m okay with that, because after all, it’s my own opinion that counts.  And here are my opinions:

GENOCIDE PACT

Genocide Pact are from Washington, D.C. They aren’t a new name for me, but they’re a welcome name — in June of last year I reviewed their 2013 debut demo, which I liked a lot. Thanks to Kevin, I discovered that just a few days ago Baltimore’s A389 Recordings released a Genocide Pact album — or maybe an EP, depending on the length you demand before calling something a full-length — named Forged Through Domination.

Genocide Pact generate a death metal sound that’s titanically heavy, with riffs, bass notes, and drum beats that you can feel from the soles of your feet straight up through your endangered skull. They prefer to stay in mid-paced or slow tempos, all the better to ensure that when they’re chugging or pounding, they can methodically flatten anything and everything in their way (including your cranium). When they do start ripping (and revealing their crust influences), it almost comes as a surprise, and the sheer contrast makes those up-tempo eruptions even more decimating.

 

 

Genocide Pact have written some obese, killer riffs in this new EP that will get their hooks in you, and they’ve also laced the music with some vicious, white hot solos. If music were regulated, the government would have recalled this thing for causing sore neck syndrome.

Forged Through Domination is available for order on 12″ vinyl, CD, or digitally, at A389’s Bandcamp page (linked below).

https://a389recordings.bandcamp.com/album/genocide-pact-forged-through-domination
https://a389recordings.bandcamp.com/music
https://www.facebook.com/genocidepact

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CAVEMAN CULT

Caveman Cult hail from Miami and they released a debut EP named Rituals of Savagery last November. Though the band is a relatively new one, their line-up includes Rick Smith, who has been Torche’s drummer since 2004. Bassist/vocalist Alvar Antillon has been involved in some other projects as well, and although Metal Archives doesn’t have any previous bands listed for guitarist H. Bosch, he doesn’t look (or sound) like this is his first rodeo either.

Speaking of rodeos, Rituals of Savagery is one hell of a bull ride, including the part where the bull throws the rider and then proceeds to gore and stomp the shit out of him while he’s squirming in the dirt and praying for rescue by some clown. The image on the cover art provides another good metaphor for what Caveman Cult dish out.

As the title signifies, this is a lesson in savagery, a massive war metal storm of ugly, eviscerating riffs, booming bass cudgels, merciless drum munitions, and ghastly vocal excretions. When the band are blasting ahead at full steam, it’s a distorted, grinding  hurricane of sound, with a production quality that drenches everything in a thick layer of filth. When they downshift into low gear, they generate a grisly, doom-drenched atmosphere, pestilential and repellant.

Yes, this is primal, primitive barbarism, just what you might expect from a band named Caveman Cult, but don’t be fooled — these people know what they hell they are doing and they hold nothing back. They’ve created an electrifying jolt of blackened death metal, driven by bloodlust, that’s one of the best releases in this space I’ve heard this year.

https://cavemancult.bandcamp.com/releases