Album Premiere: Subservience – Forest of the Impaled
Come for the riffs, stay for the RIFFS.
As a teenager, I was often teased by my friends for my attraction to riffs on the thicker side, ones who were shorter and chunkier, riffs that the average (basic) bro might refer to as “meaty” or even “fat”.” Then, as I became a man and started to educate myself on issues such as composition and how the media marginalizes death metal by portraying a very narrow and very specific standard of riff (weedly, deedly, dwoooooom), I realized how many men had bought into that lie. For me, there is nothing sexier than these riffs right here: Thick tone, big bottom end, sweet phaser effects.
These sweet, thick riffs that your teenage friends were too dense to appreciate are being brought to you today by unrelenting UK quintet Subservience. It has been three years since the band’s last release, 2014’s Upheaval EP, but lest you think the time off has dulled their edge we’ve got something to alleviate your fears: a full stream of their monstrous debut full length Forest of the Impaled!
It’s very easy to see this album slotting in alongside pretty much everything released in the early to mid 90’s. Opener “In Depravity They Dwell” rings every Dismember you have in your brain, speed freak-ing its way through the start before everything falls away to reveal the gnarliest bass riff and tone this side of the everflowing stream. Subservience aren’t afraid to play around a little, though. “A Taste for Violence” has a little bounce n’ groove to it and album closer “Descend into Despair” features some very tasteful piano (death metal is the best). Okay, enough with the words, how about we go ahead and give you the album so you can have a good, heavy ass time?
Forest of the Impaled by Subservience drops on August 11th via Black Bow Records. You can order the album here and give the band a like on Facebook here.
