Quality ‘mainstream’ death metal. – 89%
The_Bride_Wears_Black, July 19th, 2023
Written based on this version: 1998, CD, Nuclear Blast Records (Digipak)
1998 was quite the fruitful year for me. Of all the new cds that I added to my collection, easily more than a dozen of them would eventually become all-time favourites. One such album is Grind Bastard, the fifth full-length by UK death metal stalwarts, Benediction.
First a word about the cover art: that’s not a very death metal one. No blood, ghouls, horror or nightmarish picture (as was common back then for the genre), but an intriguing red-purple colour scheme and a mysterious figure you’d rather expect on a Marvel poster. Okay, so trying something new in the scene should always be encouraged, but it’s a very lightweight cover in comparison to the heavyweight metal that Grind Bastard offers.
What’s really great about the package, is vocalist Dave Ingram’s liner notes briefly explaining the topics or context for each of the songs. This allows you to get a better understanding of the lyrics and establish a closer connection to the music. It also shows that death metal can cover a wide variety of topics: serious events like on ‘Agonised’ (about Ingram’s brother’s carcrash) but also fictitious plots about a man who lies trapped under the weight of his wife’s dead body – a story told on album opener ‘Deadfall’.
Grind Bastard is, along with 2020’s Scriptures, the best produced Benediction album. True, the production is as polished, spotless and clean as your grandma’s floor before Christmas dinner, but the immense wall of sound sure punches you in the face. At the same time, Grind Bastard is, for the larger part, a collection of very accessible death metal. And by accessible I mean, memorable songs with catchy riffs and structures. This is by no means a technical album at breakneck speed with dizzying leads.
Benediction have crafted and assembled some of the best songs in their career here, with an abundance of variation. Each track is distinctively different from all the others. The intro to ‘Deadfall’ will be instantly recognizable from here to eternity, as well as the opening bassline to ‘Magnificat’, along with its excellent main theme at a trotting pace. Headbangers such as ‘Nervebomb’ and ‘We the Freed’ take no prisoners and catapult you right back to Benediction’s early days. The band even seems to have a temporary atmospheric side hustle on ‘The Bodiless’ and ‘I’, both thriving on threatening riffs and a gloomy ending. Particularly the latter one is a near-perfect combination of aggressive riffs, excellent lyrics, and a great, atmospheric finale. In fact, the album should have ended on this one.
14 songs on a death metal album is quite above the average. Then again, so is the musical quality of Grind Bastard, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But the album could have definitely done without the three redundant covers. Benediction recorded unnecessary death metal versions of Judas Priest (‘Electric Eye), Twisted Sister (‘Destroyer’), and Anti-Nowhere League (‘We Are The League’). The renditions presented to the listener here are okay, but also not more than that. With already 11 superb songs of their own, there was absolutely zero need for extra cover songs to improve the aural pleasures of the listener. On the contrary, I find myself skipping those more often than not. Style-wise they do not blend in with the rest of the album, and 50 minutes of their own quality metal is already more than enough…so why bother adding yet another 3 cover songs. They’d better kept those for some separate EP. It’s exactly because of these superfluous covers that I can’t be persuaded to honour Grind Bastard with a 90+ rating.
So skip the cover songs, but other than that: absolutely top quality death metal!
Deixe um comentário