Cold Cell - Low Life
Cold Cell is a wonderful avant-garde black metal band hailing all the way from Switzerland. Here they bring us their second full length entitled, “Low Life”. A fitting title, for the current state of most governments and societies around the world. We are simply surrounded by Low Lifes and in return have to fight off the urges to sink to their levels of sub human demeanor.
It is extremely hard to find bands especially in black metal that can switch up the flow of their music and stay consistent. Well Cold Cell serves us up a gritty and yet melodic eclectic dish of black metal treats. The record starts off with, “Lifestyle Lunacy”, what I feel is the strongest track on the album. Starting off with a ton of groove and raw vocals. Vocals that sound like as if he is crying out to the empty skies above. Then abruptly but fluidly then slipping into a torrential down pour of blast beats and tremolo picking. No matter if they are blasting or playing melodic sections, it all has the same strength behind the playing. The overtones they get with the guitar harmonies are phenomenal. Songs like, “Scum Eradication”, have some great clean and melodic interludes that strongly remind me of the great melodic aspects of Hate from Poland. Its hard to have a lot of raw elements in a band while incorporating melody but Cold Cell gives us exactly that throughout “Low Life”. At times during “Way To Prevail”, it reminds me strongly of Reverence. Being able to constantly change the swing of the music while retaining all the fluidity of the track is extremely difficult, but Cold Cell pulls it off quite well. “Needles Asylum”, brings us some serious down tempo black doom. This track is strong and driving throughout and has a very powerful outro to it. So refreshing to hear more black metal bands incorporate doom elements without saturating the sound with a wall of amps. There is something to be said about a band that can be extremely crushing but only using minimal gear set ups.
Everything on this album was produced extremely well. They are able to capture the primitive guitar sounds while still making them crisp. The drums are incredible and sound very natural and organic. The cherry on top is definitely the vocals. Very unique approach with the open distressed style. Limited control over ones voice gives more of a genuine feel. So when they scream it actually gives forth a feeling of pain and agony. Cold Cell is an amazing black metal band and I very much look forward to hearing their further endeavors and to also catch them live.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coldcellofficial
Bandcamp: http://cold-cell.bandcamp.com/
Homepage: http://coldcell.ch/
Record Label Homepage: http://www.avantgardemusic.com/
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