It would be wise to keep SWAATS (sorry, we’re not spelling that name out again) away from the whole new-jack, deathcore nonsense. Clearly, they’re not playing that game
, but when you have a moniker as such, wordy song titles and a female sampler, it’s bound to happen. That’s just how it works.
The Grand Partition and the Abrogation of Idolatry (another mouthful) readsmore like an early ‘00’s death metal album, heck, let’s go back a few years to when Olympic Records was housed under Mercury Records. There’s total death metal sensibility to this album, which is great, especially when the back-to-back bang/whallop of “10,000 Sermons, One Solution” and “The Realization That Mankind Is Viral In Its Nature” gets going. SWAATS roles out some quality, Suffocation-esque riffage, only aided by a stellar James Murphy production job.
Past that, it all levels off. There’s some mondo-brutal moments on “Despot” and “Automated Oration and the Abolition of Silence” but it’s nothing worth really getting off the couch for. We’re already hearing this stuff with the vintage death metal bands and what SWAATS is doing isn’t terribly removed from it. It’s more a matter of being served what has been served, methinks.
That being said, SWAATS is clearly a notch above the crop of new, American death metal bands popping up. Plus, they have a nifty lyrical agenda and the artwork for this thing is totally rad. SWAATS is just missing a few spots here and there. Next time out, we’ll see how this unfolds.
(This content originally appeared on Blistering.com)