REVIEWS IN BRIEF: RECENT RELEASES ON PROSTHETIC RECORDS FROM WITHERED, THE FUNERAL PYRE, AND BOOK OF BLACK EARTH
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 2:02pm by David Bee Roth
It’s should be no secret that this year has been jam packed with great extreme metal records, but what has really stood out for me in my recent listening is that for one reason or another the stars have aligned over the label Prosthetic Records. 2008 has seen their output of three new releases from recently signed, young bands. Besides having a label in common and touring together, all three of them have put out highly accomplished albums which we can only hope they’ll build a career on.
The Funeral Pyre is a Californian quintet who specializes in a moody mixture of melodic death metal sheen with depressive black metal dirge. Their most recent album, Wounds, is a mournful masterpiece sans the keyboards of their last two albums but with some layered and very melodic guitar work. They manage to sound incredibly heavy while keeping a patient tempo and I recommended them to anyone who likes some emotional investment in their metal. Keep those endorphins handy and well supplied!
Book of Black Earth are my personal favorite of this bunch and their October release, Horoskopus, might very well end up on my personal year end top 10 list. This is some refreshingly untypical death metal. While the application is simpler, even slower than your average death-heads, very few manage to be this bad-ass. Some serious detuned riffage, peppered with subtle keyboard work and a dose of evil. Horoskopus is a concept album about the origins of modern religions in astrological myths, so if metal is your preferred religion then this shouldn’t be a disappointment.
If you haven’t heard of Withered yet then you’re no friend of mine. Probably the most unique slant on extreme metal I’ve heard recently. Not quite blackened death, more like deathened black, but even that’s not an adequate description. Their sound is a familiarly metal one but their song structures are unique; changing up moods, tempos and usually building to a climax before the end. Their latest release, Folie Circulaire, is pretty spectacular and that’s all I got to say about that.
While I’m sure all of Prosthetic’s staff is probably whipped up about that Gojira record they released, too, there’s no need for you to stop listening there. Check out the myspace links for some fresh and heavy shit:
-DBR
What the fuck is wrong with you people? You have a fucking Beneath the Massacre ad on the left side of your website, but you overtly decided to not review one of the best bands with members under 25 ever.
Chances are you wouldn’t be happy if I did the review anyway lol
fuck yeah love this label some of the best metal bands out there today
check out
Hollow Corps
Beneath the Massacre the most impressive death metal band since the mid-90’s. And just because you don’t like the new mixing on the vocals doesn’t mean you need to be a chode about it.
beneath the massacre sucks, fuckin popcorn metal
These are three very unique bands. While The Book Of Black Earth immediately grabbed me The Funeral Pyre and Withered took some time to grow on me. Withered remind me slightly of Adai. I think it’s the vocals and that take a bit of getting used to.
I’m not a huge fan of the vocal mixing on Dystopia either.
The new Light This City is pretty good and I can’t say enough good shit about the new Gojira. The biggest let-down I had this year from the Prosthetic label was Century. That was just god-awful. Not so much the music but the vocals made me not ever want to hear it again.
I agree that Prosthetic has definitely become a label to watch in the past year…Gojira, Neuraxis, Hollow Corps, Book of Black Earth and Withered albums from ‘08 were all awesome. They’re still not batting 1000 – the Antagonist record was sorta useless, and I’ve never been a huge All That Remains fan – but the number of bands they’ve got these days that are great rather than just competent is increasing rapidly.