Mind Affliction - Pathetic Humanity [Full length] (2013, Metal Scrap Records)

Poland is the home of several well-known, and even more less known, metal acts, and if there's anything I've learned from previous reviews it is that new bands from Poland show a remarkably high level of musicianship and production values. Mind Affliction hail from Cracow, one of Poland's oldest cities, and originally emerged in 2009, before releasing their first demo "Mental Disorder" in 2011. In early 2013 they released their first album "Pathetic Humanity" through Metal Scrap Records, with the tracks Mental and Vishe returning in some form from the demo.

It seems like there are enough blackened death metal bands from Poland to form up a full fledged wave, a New Wave of Polish Black Death Metal if you will, or at the very least this is a strong tendency among the good people of Poland. Like many of the bands I have previously had the pleasure of reviewing, including Sphere, Ragehammer, Embrional and Stillborn, Mind Affliction delivers about 40 minutes of death metal behind a thick veil of black metal, neatly intertwining the two genres. With a few ups and downs in terms of tempo, it's still safe to say that what makes up the majority of the music on Pathetic Humanity is deathly guitar riffs with dual vocals on top of a layer high speed drumming with little to no bullshit going on.

It's a time tested recipe, but it leaves little room for surprise, and on more than one occation we find the band delving into the same riff for prolonged periods of time, which really breaks up the otherwise good flow of the album. Especially in Mental and Human Centipede, two of the earliest tracks on the debut, do they drag out the progress of the songs with one simple riff. All of the tracks apart from the intro are in excess of 5 minutes in length, so it's not even like they need to drag things out to this point.

Pathetic Humanity has a nice, thick production with drum sound that packs a LOT of punch, but for the riffs to truly come to their right they could benefit from a more crispy production. There's lots of brutality in the simplicity of riffs, and everything works well as a whole, even if the end result isn't one that is particularly memorable. The Polish band shows a flair for variety with tracks like the groovy and melodic piece Druga Strona Umyslu and the sinister track Vishe II, which still leaves room for fresh melodies. But in the end it's the fact that there are barely any hooks or anything to distinguish Pathetic Humanity by that steers it towards a 6/10 rating.

Tracklist:
1. Intro
2. Human Centipede
3. Mental
4. Vishe I
5. Druga Strona Umyslu
6. Vishe II
7. Lithium

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Haiduk - Spellbook [Full lenght] (2012, Self-released)

A lot of one-man projects suck. Adding black metal to the mix mostly doesn't help. Haiduk is the project of Canadian metalhead Luka Milojica, and this band has only been active since 2009 releasing a demo entitled "Plagueswept" in 2010. When the time had finally come to release another torrent of epic blackened death metal we had entered the year of 2012, and this incarnation of Haiduk is entitled Spellbook.

Haiduk could well be described merely as extreme metal. The Spellbook album offers a great many variations of the same mix: Black, death and thrash metal. The way Milojica holds a chord on one level while playing a more vivid thrashy melody on top of it on another level gives the music a lot of depth, only encouraged by the adding of hoarse growls straight from the grave. Haiduk is in essence lightning fast with epic riffs coming out the ass, and ultimately there's something kind of honest and pure about the music on Spellbook. It's not trying to be something it's not and as such comes across as a flow of something that comes natural to the mastermind behind it all.

There are very few things this album misses, but one of the areas it is found lacking is in the vocal department. The Bolt Thrower-esque vocals sound awesome whenever they're applied, but the problem is the scarcity. It'd be a shame for the vocals to overshadow the riffing, which is by far the album's strongest point, but throwing in some more vocals once in a while couldn't hurt and would probably also relieve the problem of some of the melodies blending together a bit.

Haiduk's Spellbook is good for what it is. The black metal-infused torrents that make up the riffs, the abyssmal vocals and the machinegun-drums form a straight up gratifying album that is sure to please any fan of blackened death metal with a tad bit of melody. If you're looking for originality or technical prowess you won't find much of either on Spellbook, but what you will find is tight as fuck metal without any acoustic interludes, overly long atmospheric intros, outros and/or intermissions and generally no bullshit. The melodic riffs tend to get a little bland with time, and for the most part the lack of vocals for variation makes some of the tracks a tad bit tedious to listen to, just short of becoming a chore. It's a problem limited to a few tracks, but it feels like the vast momentum Milojica builds up in certain songs remains unresolved for the most part. But all in all it's a phenomenal effort, and the negatives aren't even close to amounting to the positives. 8/10 guitars.

Tracklist:
1. Lich
2. Stormcall
3. Black Wind
4. Maelstrom
5. Forcefield
6. Hex
7. Tremor
8. Fire Wield
9. Lightning
10. Vortex

HAIDUK on Facebook
HAIDUK official website

Hell United - Aura Damage [Full length] (2012, Hellthrasher Productions)

Poland has had a good run of metalbands that fuse the raw brutality of death metal, the faster elements of thrash metal and the evil that drips from black metal. Like Norway produces black metal bands, Poland has in the last few years produced many great bands, including Behemoth, Hate and Vader that have probably been more or less responsible for creating this new wave of blackened death metal. I've had the pleasure of reviewing many bands like Pandemonium, Centurion, Embrional, Sphere, Stillborn and Empatic, and like these bands Hell United have sought a sound that combines the collected evils of black and death metal with some serious nods towards thrashy tendencies.

9 songs strong, Aura Damage - the second full length album from Hell United - perfectly showcases a great understanding of how to create high-tempo metal riddled with tremolo riffing and blasting drums. Songs like the sinister "Deathlike Cold", the equally fast-paced "Apostle of Plague" and the tenebrous closing track "Totality of I" are what make Aura Damage an album worth checking out if you are into the bands mentioned earlier.
The Polish quartet show great craftsmanship in the terms of writing metal, but it's not all fun and games. While the 2012 album shows great promise and provides great consistency in genuinely good songwriting, I found most of the album to border on a run of the mill type of stuff. True, the album makes for a good listen and consists of mostly pretty good songs, but in the end it all flows together into an immemorable blob, and only the three songs I mentioned earlier are really memorable.

Hell United's Aura Damage is an album that I won't deny has a good vibe to it. It yearns to be listened to, and the energy the album perveys is something speciel. But I gotta be honest and say that it isn't an album I would put on for my own listening pleasure. I wouldn't put it on for anything other than background music for when I do other stuff. But this purpose it serves greatly in that it has a great, oppressive atmosphere, good dynamic song structures and pretty good riffs. But what makes it weak as a piece in its entirity it's the fact that most of the songs sort of blend together. But even so I feel I must give Aura Damage by Hell United 7/10 guitars because of the sheer force that the work conveys.

Tracklist:
1. Red Limitations
2. Apostle of Plague
3. Deathlike Cold
4. Let the Sleeping Dogs Lie
5. Aura Damage
6. Hinterland
7. Maelstorm's Gravity
8. In Odore Sanctitatis
9. Totality of I

HELL UNITED official Facebook
Hellthrasher Productions official site

Listen for yourself!

Stillborn - Los Asesinos del Sur [Full length] (2011, Ataman Productions)

Having listened to and reviewed all these great Polish bands these last couple of weeks has made me think Poland doesn't have bad metal bands. Let's just say that Stillborn isn't going to change my mind;

Boasting a severe arsenal of semi-technical and fast blackened death metal with a ton of blast beats this fourth album from Stillborn is by no means a light-weight in terms of brutality. Their evil sound and focus on blasphemic themes fits perfectly with their choice of genre, and they do what they do very well. In conjunction with the pretty good vocals, the good production and the tremolo-based riffs this makes for an overall great recipe for fast-as-hell blackened death metal.

What the album Los Asesinos del Sur really lacks is hooks. Getting into it took me quite a few listens, and even then I'm having troubling remembering the individual songs from time to time, even if these are really good in their own right. Other than Antonym, which I feel is Stillborn's best effort on this album, the tracks tend to be "listen-and-forget", probably because they mostly follow the same formular all the way through. It simply isn't as catchy as I would've liked, but then again some may argue that blackened death metal isn't about catchiness.

To boil it all down to a few sentences, Stillborn's Los Asesinos del Sur is a worthy and above average effort in the genre. They should be proud of themselves and I'd recommend listening to Stillborn if you're into blasphemous, malevolent death metal with a twist of black metal. 7/10 guitars.

Tracklist:
1. Overture .966
2. Hymn of Destruction
3. Diamonds of the Last Water
4. Antonym
5. Son of the Holy Motherfucker
6. Blood and Dust
7. Kot Wolanda
8. Los Asesinos del Sur
9. Stillborn II
10. Whore of the Whores

STILLBORN official site
Ataman Productions official site

Pandemonium - Misanthropy [Full length] (2012, Pagan Records)

Blackened death metal has also, to me, seemed like a genre much less appreciated or widespread as other genres like death, black or thrash metal. Only a select few bands like Belphegor, Zyklon, Akercocke, Behemoth and to some extent God Dethroned and Necrophobic have gotten "big" in the scene.

Like their fellow Polish country-men in Behemoth the four man large band Pandemonium play blackened death metal with an emphasis on the death metal part. Also, like Behemoth their current sound is very modern with a huge focus on good production. I could go on about how it kinda sounds like Pandemonium wants to be Behemoth, but instead I will try to let the album "Misanthropy" speak for itself.
The songwriters of Pandemonium do have a certain knack for writing some genuinely enjoyable metal, but only rarely does the music exceed the relatively high standards created by other bands of the genre. While the great production certainly does good things for the band I can't help but feel that there are several things not quite up to par. For instance the vocals are tremendously lacklustre and mostly sound like the drunken ravings of a homeless vodka-enthusiast.

Another thing that bothered me was that Pandemonium seem to be stuck in one tempo. Almost all songs run in the vicinity of the same speeds, and only rarely does the band leave their apparent comfort zone and speed things up a little. This has the effect that most of the tracks can be very hard to distinguish between, and the songs don't really have the necessary build-up to create an actual climax.

Among the highlights of the album could be mentioned the fifth song "Avant-Garde Underground" which has a really memorable riff and is probably also one of the more atypical efforts on Misanthropy along with the melodic tracks "Only the Dead Will see the End of War" and "Misanthropy", which feature some juicy ancient-ish sounding stuff.
All in all Pandemonium's fourth album isn't that bad. Like I mentioned earlier it's a pretty good compilation of what the band themselves call "Satanic Dark Metal", but I think Misanthropy lacks the spirit and enthusiasm that made Behemoth big. 7/10 guitars

Tracklist:
1. The Black Forest
2. God Delusion
3. Necro Judas
4. Stones are Eternal
5. Avant-Garde Underground
6. Everlasting Opposition
7. Only the Dead Will see the End of War
8. Misanthropy

PANDEMONIUM official site
Pagan Records official site