By Jonny Bakes
One of the things I love about working with Über Rock is that I get a deeper understanding of just how international the metal scene has become. I’ve picked up bands from deepest Africa through to India and beyond, and yet there are still more surprises popping up as I continue this musical adventure. Today’s unexpected metal country is Tunisia, for which Metal Archives lists dozens of bands; but, for the purposes of this review, I am interested in a certain well-established band known as Brood of Hatred.
Forming back in 2010, Brood of Hatred have built up a name for their genre bending, progressive nature that makes them difficult to put into a neat box. What this does mean though is that at every twist and turn in their tracks, there is an obvious flair of technicality and musicianship that makes it very enjoyable, if you like that sort of thing of course! Friday will bring about the release of their third full length of album ‘The Golden Age’. The title may seem like a bit of a bold claim, but there’s only one way to find out for sure whether this really is ‘The Golden Age’ for Brood of Hatred so I took a big ol’ leap into the album to find out for myself.
My first impression was of an album that is dark and brooding yet teeming with heavy technicality. For those who might be familiar with some of my more obscure favourite bands, I was immediately struck by the similarities with the darker side of my favourite progressive band – Ne Obliviscaris. But there are also clear influences from the heavier era of Opeth and earlier Dark Tranquillity too. The guttural growls of Muhammed Mêlki cut through the intricately formed cacophony of noise from the instruments of… Muhammed Mêlki. That’s right, this impressive collection of dark progressive music is the responsibility of just one man!
The album opens with the foreboding introduction of ‘God Over Demons’ which slowly builds up into this cacophony of heavy noise that oozes with darkness. There’s a brutal assault of technical drumming that lays the foundation for the rest of instrumental elements to combine into a powerful force that rocked me to my core. This is certainly an impressive start to ‘The Golden Age’ and had me hooked to see what else this album had to offer. Which leads me to my other standout track ‘The Mask of Death’ which interrupts the overarching heaviness with striking melodic sections and beautiful guitar work to show that there is more to this than in-your-face technical brutality, instead there is a clear show of musical prowess from this one-man progressive project!
All in all, ‘The Golden Age’ is arguably an appropriate name for this album, as it grabbed my attention from the very start and impressed me from cover to cover. Arguably, the similarity to one of my favourite bands most likely played a part in how much I enjoyed it, but the point still stands! This will appeal to fans of bands such as Opeth and Dark Tranquillity (although arguably the earlier eras of both) and generally appeal to those who appreciate a bit of technicality in their music. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be checking out albums one and two to see what i’ve been missing over the last decade…
- ‘The Golden Age’ is released on Friday (25 February). You can get your copy HERE.
www.facebook.com/BroodOfHatred.Official
- All content © Über Rock. Not to be reproduced in part or in whole without the express written permission of Über Rock.