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CURIMUS
Artificial Revolution

Freezing Penguin (2014)
Rating: 6/10

Finnish thrash / death metal is growing ever popular with so many groups finding a niche in a field that had, just a few years ago, become over-populated by bands all too eager to revisit the 80s Bay Area scene.

Curimus is a quartet based in Loimaa, and they’ve been around since 2004. Artificial Revolution is their second opus, which follows on from the 2012 debut Realization.

These guys deal in melodic metal that embraces a number of styles, ranging from power metal, death metal, thrash metal and, to a lesser extent, black metal. The styles are channelled mainly through the diverse vocal range of Marko Silvennoinen, who is equally at home with crystal clear yawns as well as deathlier rasps and snarls. This platter boasts 11 strong tracks, with each having a progressive nature yet always remaining reasonably aggressive.

The guitars of Juha-Matti Helmi are very much groove-based, meaning that Curimus have a modern feel about their game. There is often an injection of orchestral melody too, meaning that tracks such as ‘Preachings’ remain accessible despite the hoarse vocal bellows.

The album opens with the stirring ‘Reincarnation’, which is full of blackened menace before becoming an all-out thrash assault of jolting drums and chanted chorus. Curimus hint at clean cut European thrash metal, ie Sodom, Destruction, but some of the experimentation gives a nod to more recent Sepultura in its apocalyptic nature, yet which is more than happy to flirt with modern techniques.

‘Free-Standing Nation’ and ‘No Feast For The Vulture’ are effective and belligerent; both boast incredible, pulverising drums which acts as a merciless machine gun battering ram, but this is aggressive and progressive metal that is far removed from that usual thrash mimicry. Even so, it isn’t without its faults. Hardly any of the tracks live long in the memory, however much they try to grate and scrape the soul.

‘Faith & Obsession’ relies heavily on a more straightforward Slayer influence initially, but the vocals come across as choppy raps rather than anything convincing. With its shuddering bass, ‘Love Song’ is more mid-tempo and features some interesting segments where the riffs chug deep and hard, but by the time we’ve reached ‘Unchained’ or the closer ‘Born Yesterday’, I’m reminded as to why modern thrash metal leaves me cold. And for all of its frothing ability, ‘Born Yesterday’ sounds like the sort of track that was recorded in the mid-to-late 90s after the alleged fall of metal.

Probably having more in common with Machine Head and latter day Sepultura, Artificial Revolution is a furious affair but one which lacks an overall quality and staying power. Clearly wanting to do something a tad different, Curimus have nicely injected melody into their hostility, but as an album it’s one that appears as fleeting rather than cutting.

Neil Arnold

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