BAPTISTS

Bushcraft

Candlelight
rating icon 8.5 / 10

Track listing:

01. Betterment
02. Think Tank Breed
03. Bullets
04. In Droves
05. Still Melt
06. Mortar Head
07. Crutching Trails
08. Bushcraft
09. Soiled Roots
10. Russian Spirits
11. Abandon


Vancouver 'core metallers (as opposed to the more watered-down metalcore) BAPTISTS have bounced forth from a primer 7 inch from last year with their debut album, "Bushcraft". If some noisome chaos is what you're after to turn loose your inner beast in an industrious manner, you just might want to step to this one.
CONVERGE, CURSED, RINGWORM and TODAY IS THE DAY are some of the immediate comparable acts that come to mind as "Bushcraft" slashes and garrotes with more ferocity than a male panther with its balls twisted into a knot. Squelching feedback greets and rakes gory salutations into BAPTISTS' raging wreck job, delivering a racket-filled introduction to the underground. It's not the most original style you've ever heard, but it is administered with knuckle-down honesty and full-on concentration.

"Bushcraft"'s swift tunes are thrust with spit-flung unruliness on "Betterment", "Bullets", "Mortar Head", "Think Tank Breed" and "Abandon". Employing crash-filled hardcore drives and belting metal ralphs, BAPTISTS flogs their audience with razor-tipped whips whistling amidst their tone-drowned cacophony. Shrewdly, they offer a couple of intercut dirge pieces to temporarily relieve listeners from their abusive prime directive.

The grueling punk drive of "In Droves" yields to the shirking "Still Melt" as BAPTISTS slows things down (save for drummer Nick Yachyshyn's mad dog rolls) to mingle in some ambivalent black metal guitar lines that send the punk-minded cut into an altogether different direction. Later, "Soiled Roots" halts the careening speed of its preceding tracks to unravel a stripped elegy pattern in which Andrew Drury all but pukes his F-bombs into the microphone, while guitarist Danny Marshall ushers the track into a lucid haze before blasting the cut with malevolent distortion the longer it slithers on.

The catastrophic railing of Marshall's guitars screech like siren blats on "Crutching Trails", giving way to a BAD BRAINS bomb attack that's all over with before you can start thinking of AGNOSTIC FRONT and MADBALL on the venomous title track. Likewise, the latter's whumping 'core bravado spills into the strident drive of "Russian Spirits".

In and out within a half hour as a proper hardcore album should be, "Bushcraft" minces very little and keeps focused upon its rash course, throttling anyone coming within proximity of its raucous grooves. BAPTISTS knows when to hold their omnipresent velocity in check to deliver only the barest hints of respite, given the slower cuts are equally forceful. Raw, dirty and uncordial, "Bushcraft" is nastier and more alarming than a shotgun pump. Moreover, it administers a pitiless kick once BAPTISTS pulls their collective trigger.

Author:
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).