Rating: 8.5

Country: Australia

Release Date: 2005

Record Label: Prime Cuts Music

Track list:
1. Battleblast Advance 09:41
2. Atomic Triumph 05:34
3. Hellfire Massacre 04:19
4. Sacrilegious Rage 03:16
5. Hell 08:25
6. Storming Heaven 05:11 [mp3]
7. Covered in Blasphemy 05:09
8. Warcrowned 07:21
9. The Entrance 05:54
10. Clutches of the Abyss 07:01

Total playing time 01:01:51

Band Website: The Furore

The Furore - Advance Australia Warfare

Disaster - vocals & drums
Kill Machine - guitars
Warlock- bass

There are basically two kinds of metal bands: those who can justify writing song titles like "Hellfire Massacre," and those who can't. Don't let the garish album cover with dragon hilt broadswords and Halloween Mortal Kombat helmets fool you; The Furor belong to the former.

The amusingly named Advance Australia Warfare (seriously, if I ever lose all interest in metal I may keep up with it just for its comedic value) is a potent blend of Destruktor-esque blackened death primitivism and modern thrash of the Destroyer 666 & Impiety school, each influence subordinate to a technical death metal context, tight and mathematical, with a crystal clear production job that gives both the low-end brutality and acerbic tremolo autopsy the space they deserve at such lofty BPM. The result is something like Angelcorpse meets Absu meets Immortal; so much more visceral and involving than the tremolo-over-blasturbation norsecore bullshit that's often associated with black/death hybrids. The ubiquitous conflict of elements renders any semblance of melody an afterthought, but the moments of harmonic development that do emerge through the nebulous riff salads of songs like "Atomic Triumph" are ruthlessly anthematic.

Louis delivers a mix of guttural bellows and hysterical shrieks without letting the uniformity of extreme metal vocals restrict his performance, displaying a playful affinity for rhythmic fits of laughter, tongues-ish gibberish, and some Borknagar-esque clean vocal lines braving the decidedly psychotic cacophony of atonal noise near the album's climax. Pretty impressive, considering he's also the drummer. I'm not enough of a drum nerd to adequately articulate his skill behind the kit, but let's just say skinpounding this complex is the reason anyone who likes drum machines should be shunned by their family and spat upon by everyone from monocled gentlemen to sordid vagrants with glass eyes.

Maybe I'm becoming a pussy, but the number of blastbeats in my playlist is dropping like white blood cells in a cancer patient. Luckily, Advance Australia Warfare occasionally wanders from its robust hit n' strafe death metal ethic in a manner that doesn't dilute the music, but instead fleshes it out and lets it breathe. Balancing out the album's often exhaustingly obtuse level of hour long extremity is "Hell," a gently strummed minor key dirge, slathered in ambience and guitar hiss. It's sort of reminiscent of a Misao Senbongi composition--alright, in less professional terms, it sounds like the save room music in Resident Evil 4. (I admit I had to Google it to find the composer.) Anyway, although it doesn't quite achieve the heights it could have in its eight minutes, it would be idle to simply dismiss it as filler, and I'm glad they didn't just reduce it to a few seconds and tack it on as an intro or something as many lesser bands would do. Meanwhile, "The Entrance" is a predominantly mid-paced romp built around imperially rising structural action, like a lost song from Destroyer 666's Phoenix Rising. If that doesn't whet your appetite, kill yourself, just in case poor taste in music is genetic.

A sense of humor never hurts, either; "[this promotional video is] viewable only on a computer from beyond the grave." Tee hee.

Those who enjoyed Impiety's last few efforts should show no reservation in acquiring this sensory overoad of arrogantly complex war metal.

February 14th, 2008