Spine Shatter bring the groove to Chennai with their catchy as fuck debut EP. Since their formation in 2014 they've gained the attention and respect of the city's metal community after their first ever performance at Saarang. When Karnivool played at IIT-M in January, nobody was talking about the winner of the music event. Instead I kept hearing talk of Spine Shatter.
The EP starts with Vitality, a short instrumental track. It would be easy to mistake the song solely as an intro to the album, but while it serves that purpose well, it's a terrific song by itself. It's steadily lengthening groove sets the pace for the rest of the album, and when the opening riff of the next track "War Within" starts, you know this album for what it is- relentless. But War Within changes this conception at least partly by the end of the song where the bass is spotlighted in an airy but groovy section. Like Vitality, War Within maintains mid tempo grooves through the song, but still feels fresh.
The third track, named Spine Shatter, features an up tempo opening riff, the first frenetic moment on the album. This song features a lot of groove metal cliches. The frenetic opening riff transitions to the same riff via a squealy that could have easily come from something of Ashes Of The Wake. And from there through to the end we get breakdowns and breakdowns. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The song is extremely fun and catchy. Breakdowns and squealies are alright, as long as they aren’t recycled, and there’s nothing here that’s been recycled. While riffs at time may seem familiar, they never sound like it's been ripped from something else, and they never sound stale.
Then we get to Ascendance. It's a groovy song no doubt, catchy, undoubtably fun live, but after the craziness that was the previous song, Ascendance feels a little dull. The chugginess that seems to recur in the first four songs begins to feel just a little rehashed. Aside from a cool slide section in the beginning of the song, it feels like there are no particularly fresh ideas in this song with respect to the rest of the EP. I'd call this song the low point, but it's still pretty good. Maybe it would have sounded fresher if it were the second song on the EP, but sandwiched between Spine Shatter and In The Name Of God, it feels a bit dull.
Which brings me to the final track, which is a ripper. While the EP undoubtably has a signature sound that currently would define the band, this song uses several things that set it apart from the rest of the album. Starting with a riff reminiscent of Seasons In The Abyss's clean/distorted dual guitar combination, the song has an intensity that the other songs didn't quite have. I really like the use of vocal harmonies on this track. The song also uses samples of speeches and news reports to drive home its anti Jihad stance, which I feel is a little cliched and overused (see Sacrificed Sons by Dream Theater). But overlooking that, it's a strong song and they've definitely tried something different with it.
The vocals on the EP are consistently fantastic. Vince Neilstien of MetalSucks recently said that metal vocalists have nothing to provide to metal music anymore. But the energy that the vocals provide to the album are a solid argument against that. The guitars have some of the downtuned depth of Meshuggah, and some of the athleticism of, say, Lamb Of God. They nail it at times, but other times seem neither here nor there. It's said that the seventh string tends to make guitarists lazy with the other strings. This seems to be the case here, and the top two, maybe three strings seem to be getting abused, with the others left to rust for the most part. Maybe it's part of the band's sound, it would be cool if they're able to retain it while extending their note library. The bass is solid, keeping a solid groove, but not afraid to go beyond it. But instrumentally, the drums are definitely the high point of this EP. Tight as fuck, giving the guitars something to cling to at all times, while somehow doing its own thing all the time. They really dress up the album at sections that are potentially boring or cliched. Even the samples in In The Name Of God are really made more interesting by the drums.
In essence, this EP is catchy as fuck. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's tons of fun and never feels stale. They can only get better from here.
Spine Shatter are:
Tushar Nayak (Vocals)
Vishal K.R (Guitar)
Akshay Thyagarajan (Guitar)
Shiv Rekhi (Bass)
Pranav K.R (Drums)
They're album is available for download and streaming on their SoundCloud page:
If you like them, like I like them ;), you could like them on Facebook.
And you could support them by seeing them live at Geoffrey's Pub on the 28th, opening for Zygnema at Raw Power Edition 2!
