Anavar – I, Dominus
Hailing from my hometown Perth, Western Australia, I am proud to say that Anavar kick it old school playing a fresh take on death metal combined with the breakdowns of the core scene. Have we heard of this style before? We most certainly have, however, instead of being blinded by the constant monotone chug of a breakdown over some occasional slapped on blast beats and cookie-cutter guttural vocals, here we have a band that really is a death metal band with hardcore influences, rather than a straight up deathcore band with death metal influences. To make this more understandable, I use the example of Burning Skies’ album "Greed.Filth.Abuse.Corruption" where the band played death metal, but had hardcore influences such as gang shouts and the overall style of the vocals, but had no breakdowns what so ever. Now, this release does have breakdowns and I am not shunning them in anyway as I am a big fan of them if they are done right, what I am saying is though, that Anavar feel like a straight up death metal band, who have breakdowns.
Instrumentally and vocally, the album is great, the drums are very tight and every time a blast beat came in, it just sent me to hell and back, they were devastatingly brutal and captured my attention every time. Guitars were more than impressive, there were groove driven death metal riffs and small little runs thrown around in places which were more than acceptable, what really impressed me though was the song titled 'Bury Me' casting the more melodic side of the band which I wish we got more of on the other tracks, the solo in this song was more than epic, it was very power metal like and really caught my attention, hands down my favourite song off of the EP. The vocals had great variety and balls to them as well, I do however feel the higher screams could be done a bit better but I am sure improvement overtime will only follow for this band after this already impressive EP. Bringing up the topic about those hardcore influences again, I found the breakdowns done on this release were perfectly in place, some were so simple yet so satisfying such as the one in Bury Me which is just instant head-bang material. Musically, this album ticked the box on everything you can do right with death metal.
Anavar are on the high grounds after this EP and you can even check out a more recent song by them called Cataclysm featuring CJ McMahon! So people, if you like solid death metal with breakdowns, tight production and a fresh approach on extreme music in general, then I definitely recommend "I, Dominus". For fans of Thy Art Is Murder, Suffocation, and Obituary.
Instrumentally and vocally, the album is great, the drums are very tight and every time a blast beat came in, it just sent me to hell and back, they were devastatingly brutal and captured my attention every time. Guitars were more than impressive, there were groove driven death metal riffs and small little runs thrown around in places which were more than acceptable, what really impressed me though was the song titled 'Bury Me' casting the more melodic side of the band which I wish we got more of on the other tracks, the solo in this song was more than epic, it was very power metal like and really caught my attention, hands down my favourite song off of the EP. The vocals had great variety and balls to them as well, I do however feel the higher screams could be done a bit better but I am sure improvement overtime will only follow for this band after this already impressive EP. Bringing up the topic about those hardcore influences again, I found the breakdowns done on this release were perfectly in place, some were so simple yet so satisfying such as the one in Bury Me which is just instant head-bang material. Musically, this album ticked the box on everything you can do right with death metal.
Anavar are on the high grounds after this EP and you can even check out a more recent song by them called Cataclysm featuring CJ McMahon! So people, if you like solid death metal with breakdowns, tight production and a fresh approach on extreme music in general, then I definitely recommend "I, Dominus". For fans of Thy Art Is Murder, Suffocation, and Obituary.
- Plight Of Pawns
- Post-Human Design
- Blood Eagle
- Bury Me (feat. Nish Raghavan and Michael Clocherty of Xenobiotic)
- I, Dominus
Self released
Reviewer: Samuel Worsfold
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016
Next review:
Bring On The Bloodshed – Amongst The Ruins
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