Serocs – And When the Sky was Opened (Comatose Music)
Thursday, 19th November 2015
The wonders of the world today, where you can have a group of musicians in a band that spread themselves from all across the globe. Serocs has members from Mexico, Finland, the US, and Canada, all pulled together for one singular vision: death metal. And accomplish that goal with pride, this international band does.
The band’s third album, And When the Sky was Opened takes little time to tell the listener what they are in store for. Snarling, potent death metal with just enough technicality to keep one’s attention but not forgetting the brutal roots of the genre. It’s more akin in the technical department to say, Immolation or Suffocation than Gorod or Spawn of Possession. It hits all of the bases that you would expect a death metal album to touch upon. There’s some low growls (again a bit like Immolation), aggressive riffing and interesting (death metal) melodies, and machine gun drumwork. What helps Serocs stick out a bit is that they can take a few tracks and really stretch the time frame. The album’s strongest two tracks are surprisingly the lengthiest, with “When the Ground Swallows Us…” and the title track moving towards and exceeding eight minutes. It’s no easy feat to keep this type of music interesting without losing the intensity, but Serocs are more than capable of doing so – filling the time with some exceptional leads and solos and massive riffs. In a few other moments, they use some clean guitar to break things up as well, seemingly understanding that one does need a slight reprieve in the brutality department from time to time.
Effective death metal that knows exactly what it is and panders to its strengths, And When the Sky was Opened is a textbook case of how to do right by the genre. Nothing extraneous, no added bells & whistles, just brutal to the core. Always room for another one of these bands in this writer’s book.
