Refusal - Where's Your Heart?

'Where's Your Heart' is Refusal's fourth demo to date, and like their previous ones, just gets slightly better and better. Here the band continues in their crushing death metal style, but go for more catchy and discernable/ listenable rather than just crushing distortion and obliteration in the way of machine gun drums and spitfire vocals. Some tracks like "False Opinion" reflect earlier demos and unfortunately are a bit too fuzzy to enjoy in production style and also sound a bit generic. But other such as "Utilized" are more groove oriented while still remaining  brutal (think 'Insineratehym' styled stuff from Deicide). The title track is very short, but balances well produced sound and heavy, aggressive tempos with thick, chugging riffs and a mix between screaming vocals and the growling with a few decent solos heaped in between. If only it were longer...

"Satan Genocide" in face seems like it takes cues from Deicide with how the vocals are layered with the deep growls and high pitched shriekings (usually they don't go that high). Plus, the whole 'Satan' concept fits too. The guitars feature a few interesting and unorthodox solos, even if its just for a few notes or two, to make things interesting. But, overall, the track is mostly just as fuzzy as the first one which makes the technical bits hard to enjoy to the fullest. Overall, this demo is an improvement from their last one, which was a bit too heavy, and at the same time, generic. Hopefully, with more demos and more progression, Refusal will work their way up to a decent full length album of death metal.

  1. False Opinion
  2. Utilized
  3. Where's Your Heart?
  4. Satan Genocide

Self released
Reviewer: Colin McNamara
Feb 18, 2011

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