(Andy Synn says that listening to the new Duhkha album is an experience you can’t come back from)
While a lot has been written about the various Death Metal bands incorporating more and more stripped-back, straight-to-the-throat Hardcore dynamics over recent years (some more successfully than others, I might add) much less has been written about bands going the other way.
Which is a shame, because the last few years alone have seen the likes of END, Incendiary, Bridge Burner, End Reign, Underneath and Umbra Vitae (whose latest I still haven’t gotten around to reviewing) all stepping up to demonstrate that the lines between the likes of Earth Crisis and Entombed, Overcast and Obituary, Cro-Mags and Cannibal Corpse, have always been blurrier than the “scene police” pretend.
And now we’ve got Duhkha, whose absolutely devastating debut album, A Place You Can’t Come Back From is here to put one more humongously heavy nail in that particular coffin.
Of course, when you consider that Duhkha‘s line-up contains members of Tzompantli, Teeth, and Eighteen Visions, the sheer heaviness of the band’s sound isn’t really all that surprising, but even so… that first brutish blast of belligerence during opener “Ictal” – just under three minutes of massive, rolling riffs and disgustingly down-tuned rhythms, all topped off with an impressively aggro and in-your-face vocal performance – will still knock you on your ass if you’re not properly prepared for it.
This album is more than just an amateur beatdown however, it’s more akin to a targeted assault by a bunch of professionals who’ve been paid very well to hurt you as thoroughly as possible, whether that’s in the form of the bone-grinding, Death and Doom inflected stomp of “Arrows”, the almost Meshuggah-like pneumatic pounding of “Ascension Night”, or the blast ‘n’ burn, chug ‘n’ churn of “Defecting our Vanished Light” (and that’s just the first half of the record).
It’s an unrelenting piece of work, that’s for sure, and I’m sure for some people the unwavering intensity of a track like “Heaven Screen” – equal parts Hardcore and Death Metal, Deathcore and Death-Doom, and also equally capable of enticing, or alienating, fans of all those genres, depending on their mood – will (understandably) prove a little overwhelming.
But the fact that the songs (with one major exception that I’ll say more about shortly) stick to a relatively (and crushingly) concise run-time, somewhere between one-and-a-half and four-and-a-half minutes, in general, while also managing to keep switching up their attack (as exemplified by the blastbeat and breakdown injected dirge of “A Crisis Area Forever”) means that A Place You Can’t Come Back From never gets boring… even if it sometimes gets almost a little too bludgeoning.
Thankfully, however, Duhkha aren’t afraid of incorporating some suitably monstrous hooks (“Dweller on the Threshold” in particular will likely embed itself in your primal unconscious immediately) amidst all the obnoxious heaviness (and penultimate punisher “Revelator”, with its absolutely gargantuan guitars and gravity-distorting grooves, might just be the heaviest of all).
And while there’s a chance you’re going to be thoroughly worn out (and more than a little bruised), both mentally and physically, by the time that unexpectedly proggy, closer “null” hits your ears, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that at least some of you, especially the more masochistic of you, will be coming back for another beating soon after.
I know I will.