Slave Zero Reviews
Northern Blaze Fanzine
Slave Zero- Exempt From All Tolerance
(Double Standard Productions)
After listening to this it becomes funny just how inadequate the description of “Death/Thrash Metal” on Slave Zero’s metal archives page is. There is so much going on in this record’s 35 minute span that it is quite a lot to digest sonically all at once.
There are parallels with both recent Napalm Death and Abaddon Incarnate’s live punishments in the multi-layered vocal attack, a big Jamey Jasta influence on the shouting vocals, pure Sepultura-style Thrash aggression, Suffocationesque brutality, moments that call to mind Cephaliac Carnage or Misery Index’s modern take on Grind and to top it off a big smack of Born From Pain-like rhythmic pounding Hardcore.
Oh and how can we leave out the melodic leads and solos (on closing track “Vengeance” in particular) that could have been taken straight from either of the last two Carcass albums? So there are a dozen bands that Slave Zero have obviously been influenced by (did I mention there’s some Sludge a lá Soilent Green in there too?) but do they sound like any of them? No, at least not all the time. The great thing is that you can hear all these elements in every song and the huge punch up of styles
never seems out of place. It’s an intricate and delicate mix,and technically executed in places as well but you never get time to wonder if there is too many ingredients in the cake and that is because you are constantly being hit squarely in the fucking face with it. “Straight For The Jugular” isn’t just a great song, it is this band’s mission statement; as soon as the Gary Oldman in “Leon” soundbyte fades (if you’ve seen the movie you’ll know the one) you are taken by the throat and for 35 minutes you are Slave Zero’s bitch as the pummel you repeatedly without ever letting up. But don’t be fooled into
thinking this is unsophisticated though; song titles such as “Engineering Opportunities To ‘Ordain’ The Innocent” show the care that has gone into the socially aware lyrics and everything about the battery of sonic violence sounds as though has been thoughtfully prepared. Where to pigeon-hole then you might ask? Deathcore? Well, its not wrong to say that this is a mix of the best bits of Brutal Death Metal and sometimes equally brutal Hardcore but to lump this in a genre dominated by fringe-sporting boys who can’t even grow chinpubes yet (or write a decent song for that matter) would be a
great disservice to Slave Zero. Grindcore? Well tempo-wise Slave Zero never really kick it into fifth gear but this is an album that should hopefully remind people that the Hardcore side of the equation is just as important to Grind as really fast Death Metal. Who cares what you call it at the end of the day;what Slave Zero have done is taken influence from every dried up and stagnated sub-genre in the field and thrown it together with such energy that while it may not be groundbreaking, it is still positively head-splitting.