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RAVENS CREED
Get Killed Or Try Dying

Xtreem Music (2018)
Rating: 9/10

London, England-based death metal party Ravens Creed have been in existence since 2006 and have coughed up a batch of steadfast records; three of which have merged during a particularly prolific time from 2012 until now.

Get Killed Or Try Dying is a rather snappy affair in that all of the songs are under three-minutes, and so in a sense I do feel a bit unfulfilled by 13-tracks with a total duration of under 30-minutes. But if you like ravenous, frothing and fast-paced death metal in the vein of, say, Master, then you do need this album in your life.

These guys don’t hang about; the frantic axe attack of Steve Watson is the key here as he treats us to numerous cutting throwback riffs of trudging menace and aggression. From the off with ‘Intro-Unrelenting Supremacy’ we have a really grisly tone, the band supplying thrashy-death from the early to mid 80s propelled further by the throaty gasps of Al Osta, who once spent time with Cerebral Fix.

Osata’s tone is infectious and always snarling and intimidating, but all the way through this record one gets a real scene of old school sincerity as they blaze through ‘Dead Bird On Winchester Street’, the grotesque slog of ‘Dead On A Rival’, and the gore-soaked ‘Off With Their Legs’ which comes chugging in with such menace that I had to reach for a spare pair of underwear.

While the tracks are short, one feels as if they’ve been transported to a wondrous time for the death metal era as Ravens Creed (in spite of their rather un-death metal moniker) brings to the table a veritable feast of meaty chunks to gorge on.

Forget all the Swedish mimics, this one rattles with such a quality as elements of crust, punk and thrash are straddled by a huge fusty death metal odour; the putrid posse choking their way through the title track as the clanking bass of Rod Boston billows black smoke while hinting at a caustic Venom tone. Meanwhile, ‘Rats Beneath Our Feet’ and ‘Remember The Hammer’ showcase the fantastic drum work of Jay Graham as the band embarks on a punked-up Venom-meets-Hellhammer style of the drunken grotesque.

Fuck, this is some seriously catchy yet nasty crap. The blow of ‘Hymn & Hearse’ supplies a satanic Anthrax vibe in the drudgery of guitar, while ‘Sound Of Sirens’ begins with a horrid and squalid crust grind; the band nodding towards the likes of Amebix and then Death Strike as the assaults of sleaze and sludge marry up to create an onslaught of grinding death-thrash.

‘The Trauma Of Being Hunted’ sums up this nasty blitzkrieg, and thank the lord it’s a short and tetchy record; the songs benefiting from such irritable structures and bad-tempered instrumentation. Get Killed Or Try Dying revels in its fornications with the pungent ghosts of death metal’s past, and remains all the more vehement and abhorrent for it.

Neil Arnold

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