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ATOMICIDE
Chaos Abomination

Iron Bonehead Productions (2015)
Rating: 7/10

As this trio stands, armed to the teeth with chains, skulls and bullet belts I am reminded of numerous South American bands from the mid 80s who seemed to spend their lives promoting inverted pentagrams and tales of war and terror.

Not much has changed in fact, because Atomicide is a Chilean trio who like to burp out the same extremes – channelled through chaotic guitars, bludgeoning drums and vocal echoes which sound as if Satan is finally angered by his flaming indigestion.

With Chaos Abomination – the band’s second full-length opus – these guys have come up with one of the more fitting album titles because it’s a moniker which most certainly seems apt for this direct belligerent style that comes via the rattling holocaustic guitar sound of Deathbringer and that punishing drum racket of A. Prophaner.

I guess it’s thrashing death metal that typifies the continent from which it originates because since the 1980s I’ve been bombarded by so much of this guttural extremity that at times it’s difficult to differentiate one band from the next, but this style of war metal seems to be the only thing those South Americans are interested in and you cannot fault it when it’s this violent. In fact, the vocals here simply sound like someone has been banging the walls of a dungeon with a metal pipe and the drumming sounds like a snippet of machine-gun fire sampled from a body strewn warfield.

Atomicide is a grim, unrelenting trio hell-bent on what the press release states is a “hellstorm of deathrashing madness”, and that just about sums it all up: a sorry violent mess with such delightful song titles as ‘Pestilential Hammer Blows’, ‘Megaton Desolation’ and that abhorrent title track.

Imagine some giant, rusty machine created by an equally unforgiving master and then let loose upon the ashen ground flailing blades, puking black smoke and slaying many just by its woeful cacophony as nuts, bolts and paint peals away from its very armour. It’s mostly a fast-paced hammering where the drums are beyond hyper. And to say they complement the nasty bass is an understatement, because every musical instrument present here is just a chewed up, spat out and trampled on piece of scrap metal responsible for some of the most hellish clattering you’ll hear this side of the local scrap yard.

Believe it or not, however, there are some catchy moments within the mesh of pace with the likes of ‘A.T.O.M.I.C.I.D.E.’ offering brief flecks of accessibility, although it’s soon back to that rampant, frothing, scathing attack resulting in dark grey plumes of smoke entering our ears and bathing our lungs in toxic gloop. Yep, it’s chaotic and yes it’s an abomination… but what else did you expect?

Neil Arnold

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