Let’s face a cold, hard, absolutely infuriating truth, my filthy animals: It is genuinely rare these days that anything in this cynical, oversaturated industry is precisely what it claims to be, and nowhere is that corrosive trend more violently true than within the confines of this thing of ours. The entire ecosystem is choked with misdirection and outright marketing deceit.
The sheer number of times I’ve seen some hapless rag of a music publication—or, worse, some self-aggrandizing PR drone—aggressively market something as Black Metal, only for me to hit the play button and instantly find that the resulting noise has far more in common with a busted vacuum cleaner being left to run next to a microphone while some shrieking bellend in another room has a nervous breakdown as their dial-up modem screeches its final death rattle, is, frankly, beyond counting. The noble term has been watered down, bastardized, and rendered functionally useless by mass incompetence and a pathetic need to slot every noise into a marketable box.
This same corrosive, irritating trend infects every single other genre in this heavy sphere of ours. You get the inevitable, pathetic announcements landing in your inbox: “Hey! Here’s the new album by Random Band You’ve Never Heard Of! If you worship at the altar of Iron Maiden then you’re absolutely going to love this!” Then, the very moment you hit play, the stark, brutal reality hits you like a cheap shot to the kidneys: the group in question wouldn’t know Iron Maiden if the immortal Eddie himself walked right up to them, ripped the guitars from their hands, and kicked them squat in the nuts.
I’ve had to endure countless Acoustic Folk bands—utterly devoid of aggression or menace—being lazily labelled as Pagan Metal, which I suppose, to a certain degree of self-delusional generosity, isn’t that far off the thematic mark. I’ve seen Hair Metal bands, still dripping in aqua-net and cheap spandex, criminally labelled as Thrash simply because their guitarist managed one isolated, pathetic moment of quick noodling in between thrusting his sequined crotch at a bored audience. And don’t even try to get me started on the plague of Pop bands being deceitfully labelled as Punk just because the singer managed to coax a few meagre spikes onto their head. It’s all noise, it’s all marketing fluff, and nine times out of ten, it’s all a blatant, unforgivable lie.
Like I said, nothing is what it seems, and genre labels are largely the sound of a tone-deaf marketing department farting out misinformation. As a rule, I ignore the shit out of the labels entirely, hit the play button with a grim expectation of disappointment, and within about thirty seconds of raw audio exposure, I can tell you definitively if an album is going to stick, or if it’s going straight into the digital bin fire where it belongs. I trust my ears, not the hype.
But then, occasionally, miraculously, there are glorious exceptions. Once in a blue, bloody moon, something will slip through the net, bypass the bullshit filters, and do exactly what it says on the tin with a terrifying degree of sonic accuracy. Case in brutal point: Reveal by Vein.
This absolute, uncompromising slab of unforgiving metal landed on my desk courtesy of the good people at Against PR, and the accompanying notes confidently declared it to be Groove Death Metal. I won’t lie; I nearly choked on my decades-honed cynicism. But fuck me gently with a chainsaw if they weren’t telling the absolute, gospel truth.
Reveal is the very definition of Groove Death Metal. This isn’t just heavy; this is heavy as two massive, well-fed sumo wrestlers jumping simultaneously onto your already broken, twitching back. It’s an immediate, seismic weight that pins you to the floor and aggressively demands your submission. But unlike the plodding, predictable stomp of so much generic modern groove metal, this record possesses a genuinely filthy, infectious soul in its heart. It swings, it sways, and it delivers its monumental aggression with such an inherent, infectious rhythm that I had to physically check the band line-up to make absolutely certain that they hadn’t secretly resurrected the glorious, funky ghost of Curtis Mayfield to lay down some earth-shaking, subterranean rhythm tracks.
The riffs are the absolute centre of this violent universe. They instantly lock into grooves that compel immediate physical movement—be it spontaneous headbanging, vicious pit-brawling, or simply a slow, deliberate, heavy-gaited march toward whatever damn oblivion you happen to be facing.
The aggression of the pure Death Metal elements is never, ever diluted by the funk of the groove; instead, the groove simply makes the aggression exponentially more dangerous. It’s the difference between a clumsy, angry drunk attacking you and a trained, professional boxer hitting you with a rhythmic, predictable, but utterly lethal combination. Vein operates with the latter, delivering a calculated, crushing fury that is both musically astute and primitively satisfying. This album is a revelation of honest, uncompromised, correctly-labeled power, and that, my friends, is a terrifyingly rare thing indeed.
Reveal by Vein will be available November 14th via HateWorks.
CHOICE CUT: The Fallen
BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: Forget the marketing sludge. Vein’s Reveal is a violent exception to the genre-bending rule. This record doesn’t lie; it delivers exactly what is promised: Groove Death Metal heavy enough to crack foundations and infectious enough to incite a genuine riot. Absolute, crushing sonic honesty. Essential.
PRESS SOURCE: Cátia C./Against PR.
