Here we are in the 21st century, with a metal scene unlike we've ever seen before. No longer can a band succeed by striving to simply be the "heaviest" or "most metal," because it's been done countless times before. Now, it's about the style just as much as it is the substance, it's about broadening the horizons of the listener and incorporating more than just blast beats and ugly vocals, that is if you want to make a great record. For Slaves BC, they do exactly that with a blend of hardcore punk and blackened doom metal that has established themselves as one of the most exciting upcoming bands in the metal scene, in my personal opinion at least. They've released a handful of singles, 7' splits, and EPs over the last couple years, but All Is Dust And I Am Nothing is their first full-length album, and boy is it ever packed to the brim with the rawest of raw vocals and nasty, chugging, guitar riffs guaranteed to leave you begging for more (or maybe less?)
The album, loosely referred to as a concept album, sees the band explore the meaning of life. If you are unsure of what exactly it is that they discovered throughout this venture, maybe the song titles will help clarify. A quick peak at the track listing gives you titles such as God Has Turned His Back, All Find Their Way to Their Grave, and Everything Is Meaningless. The music however, doesn't deliver exactly in the same vein that the song names might lead you to expect, as the project feels quite a bit more like the narrative of a man's life than it does the emo record that the track listing might imply. As the LP progresses, the screeched vocals, which do at times feel as if they were inspired by early 90's screamo, feel as if they become lower and lower in the mixing. Progressively becoming drowned out in dirty, muddy, distortion. It's as if the man's thoughts are no longer clear, or at least are not distinguishable to those who hear them. The ferocity and raw nature of the vocals are perhaps best displayed when tracks come to a halt, on cuts such as Crawling Through Nothing and Why Are We Here? the band makes the decision to finish the tracks with blood curdling, animalistic shrieks rather than relying on the heaviness of their respective instruments.
Anyone can pound on a drum set and scream into a microphone, and while at times it may seem as if that's all that the Pittsburgh based hardcore outfit are doing, it always leads to something bigger and badder. Whether they're looking to bring out the ugliest, meanest noise possible on the tracks God Has Turned His Back and Nothing Remains But Death, which feel at times as if they were influenced by mathcore acts such as Converge or Dillinger Escape Plan, or moments where they are looking to create some cleaner, more traditional metal instrumentation like on Everything Under the Sun, the band always seems to be looking to try something different than what you have heard on the previous track. Even if the progression is minuscule, it can still always be found.
Beauty in metal is more prominent than ever before. Subgenres such as post-metal and blackgaze, are seeing acts incorporate lush soundscapes and more atmospheric elements into their sound that previously wouldn't have been accepted as being heavy metal. For Slaves BC however, their sound is as far from being pretty as humanly possible. It's dirty, it's raw, and it's ugly as hell, yet the band refuse to let that be the ultimate selling point of their sound. Instead, they focus on building bone crushingly heavy and slow, methodically placed riffs that when met with the angry drum bashing and wretched vocals makes for arguably the nastiest metal album I've heard this year.
Rating: 3.5/5
Listen to the the track Everything is Meaningless below:
If you enjoy ugly, disgusting, rage inducing metal music I suggest also checking out my review for the latest Seven Sisters of Sleep album Ezekiel's Hags.
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