RSS Feed


MEMORIAM
Rise To Power

Reaper Entertainment (2023)
Rating: 8.5/10

Grinding their gears through a fifth instalment is UK death metallers Memoriam. With Rise To Power we again find ourselves in the trenches with the ghosts of Bolt Thrower as vocalist Karl Willetts drags his men through the bloodstained mud in search of victory.

As expected, Memoriam’s latest attack chugs, billows black smoke, and gutturally expresses its fury by way of a series of ashen, chugging riffs and Willetts’ dust-coated larynx. The band probably won’t thank me for using words such as “prolific”, “consistent” and “reliable”, but for me Memoriam is very much a required constant in a genre that is expressing more murky versatility than ever before. So every now and then it’s just nice to sit back and be bludgeoned by old school themes, cover art and musical drubbing.

Naturally, the key here is the titanic riffage which just belches like an old chimney that coats the landscape in its vomited powder. Couple this with the crushing percussion of Spikey T. Smith and the driving bass of Frank Healy and you’ve got a militant traipse through boggy fields where bodies lay like discarded litter and the pallid sky grows darker with every melodious storm.

It’s only natural that the feel of this colossal record will occasionally lean towards UK hardcore elements. Grit, determination and confrontation are the main ingredients behind this steamroller as gargantuan tomes such as ‘Never Forget, Never Again (6 Million Dead)’ and ‘This Pain’ drag you through a series of gruelling historic events where Willetts’ brutal narrations act as stark reminders to a past we must never remove from our watered down minds. Meanwhile, ‘All Is Lost’ grinds like an unstoppable tank in the heart of the combat zone where stark entwining passages provide extra bleakness to work in tandem with monstrous gnashing rhythms.

That bruising, organic Britishness drives this record through the mountains of ash as the black smouldering silt of ‘Total War’ sees the crust-caked combo mightily charge with hammering percussion as strains of Bolt Thrower’s The IVth Crusade (1992) comes to fruition. Willetts’ dehydrated coughs act as dry, pallid walls throughout; his gaping hole of a mouth seethes like a furnace gasping for more bones to chomp on.

Rise To Power is a groove-based death machine that coughs, splatters and chugs in accordance to its own wheezing lungs; ever punishing, ever riveting but delivered with the utmost sincerity and emotion as a war torn vessel. The battle ever rages on and yet Memoriam stands tall upon the wastelands of grime, gore and ash.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share