Heavy Breathing

VINYL FORMAT. 'I once told someone that Comets on Fire was the most Japanese sounding band from America that I had ever heard. If I knew nothing about the band, and heard their first two albums, I would have assumed they were from Japan. If I knew nothing about Black Breath, I would have assumed that the Seattle, Washington four piece was actually from Sweden. While last year's stellar EP, Razor To Oblivion, blazed through the same sonic territory as Disfear, on Heavy Breathing the band go far beyond the metallic D-beats of their debut. The guitars on that EP reminded me of Entombed, and sure enough, this is good old Death N' Roll like we haven't heard since Wolverine Blues first dropped. It's got all the brutal swagger of that album, along with healthy doses of Grave and Dismember influence for good measure. It's a huge sounding record too, with the drums branching out from the crust of the debut, and the bass really filling out the low end while the gnarly guitars lay down the filth. So they've got the sound down pat, but ultimately what makes this album a winner in my book are the songs. With songs like the savage opener "Black Sin (Spit On The Cross)" and relentlessly grooving "Unholy Virgin," what Black Breath have done is put that lighthearted spin on dark subject matters, which was what made the whole Death N' Roll thing so much fun in the first place. There are great, memorable guitar melodies interspersed with the brutal riffing that help seal the deal and get you singing the tunes in your head for hours.

I predicted big things on the horizon for this band after hearing the promise of Razor To Oblivion, and this album does not disappoint in the slightest. The band's evolution in the course of only a release is self evident, and it's good that they manage to capture the intensity of a genre defining album like Wolverine Blues without trying to mimic it. At the end of the day, Black Breath aren't from Sweden, and with each listen that becomes more and more apparent as the more subtle nuances and influences really start to sink in. Obviously fans of any of the bands that I've name-dropped would do well to sink their teeth into this one, but I think this has some broader, more "cross-over" appeal, so you'd do well to go out and get it. Although it's overtly extreme metal influenced, it's got the inflections and immediacies of a rock album, and that's going to turn some heads no matter who is listening.' - Andy "Dinger" Beresky / StonerRock.com