On March 15th — tomorrow! — the Quebec band Backstabber, now featuring a revised lineup since their last album, will release their new EP, a four-song assault called Patterns of Domination, but today we’re giving you a chance to hear all of it without delay.
Before we get into some detailed thoughts about the music, here’s the band’s description of what the EP represents:
“Loosely based on James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, Patterns of Domination delves into the 4 patterns that serve as means to canalize someone else’s attention and energy. Together, they form an endless cycle of consumption that completely breaks down the victim from the inside out. Like fresh air. These are the first songs with the new members of the band and they contributed a lot to this album.”
Backstabber reveal the first pattern — Intimidation — in the opening track “Harvesting the Weak“, which was also presented through a video as the EP’s first single. It’s an unmistakably brutal piece of work, a high-octane death metal slugger that’s also packed with vicious swarming riffage, gruesome gutturals, and boiling-in-oil screams.
It also includes slamming chords for extra punishment, miserably mewling guitar-leads that ignite into fret-burning paroxysms, and grooves that sound like mortar fire discharging at an overheating rate of speed.
From there, the band segue into “Langues Sales“. The band explain: “French for dirty tongues, it represents a vicious pattern, the poor me. These people are always complaining about everything, every day, every time. It’s like they don’t really get to live, life is inflicted upon them. It’s trash, thrash, and breakdowns.”
This one’s another turbocharged ravager, driven by decimating low-end discharges and wailing, siren-like radiations in the upper reaches. Freakishly skittering fretwork makes the song sound increasingly crazed and enraged as it goes, and it’s seemingly bent on breaking every bone in the listener’s body. It features another solo, and this one sounds even more miserable than the last one, as well as start-stop flares of brazen sound that announce a finale of spectacular catastrophe.
After that breathtaking barrage, Backstabber create a stark contrast, with the slowly ringing and exotic notes that open “Crawling Through Your Bones“, but it doesn’t stay mysterious and morose for very long. Again, from the band: “This is the most vicious one of all, interrogation. Everything you say can and will be used against you, and we will make you say everything and anything. That’s Melodeath, because it hooks you right in without you noticing.”
No surprise here, but the band again discharge ruthless, bludgeoning brutality at a frantic rate of speed – but that eerie opening melody, which begins to sound spawned from Arabian sands, carries forward through the growling and screaming and the vigorous pile-driving punishment. The soloing here meshes very well with the song’s melodic throughline, but carries it to spectacular heights before the band reach a dark denouement.
Tough to follow that song, which is probably the best one on the EP, but “Snitches Get Stitches” proves to be up to the task. The band say: “Describing this pattern shouldn’t be allowed. Indifference didn’t call for this! That’s why we went blindfolded in the mist musically ending up in places we might never have gone to otherwise”.
The song’s swirling opening melody seizes attention right damned fast, but Backstabber again mount a high-speed assault geared toward sucking all the air from a listener’s lungs, an assault mounted with heavy-caliber drum munitions, frenetically swarming fretwork, jackhammering grooves, and gargantuan roars.
But one more time, the band infiltrate the ruination with slowly slithering melodies that also make an impact, and there’s one more solo that will pop eyes wide open. Blasting fusillades open up near the end, and the riffing soars sky-high in a stunning display of frightful glory, distressing and agonized yet awe-inspiring, culminating in a panoramic symphonic outro.
In a nutshell, the entire EP is spectacular — a forward-rushing union of bone-smashing belligerence, vicious but technically impressive riffing, moving and jaw-dropping solos, monstrous and unhinged vocal rage, and melodic accents that give all the songs their own distinctive character.
And with that we’ll leave you to this heart-hammering four-track powerhouse:
Christian M. Thériault: Guitar/Vocals
Philippe B. St-Jacques: Guitar
Eric Séguin: Bass/Back Vocals
Keven L.-Hull: Drums
Patterns of Domination was produced by Christian M. Thériault, and it was mixed and mastered by Cryptopsy‘s Christian Donaldson. It’s recommended for fans of Revocation, Hypocrisy, Kataklysm, Lamb of God, and Mors Principium Est.
PRE-ORDER:
https://backstabbermetal.bandcamp.com/album/patterns-of-domination
BACKSTABBER:
https://www.facebook.com/BackStabberMetal
https://www.instagram.com/backstabbermetal/