There’s a saying that I’ve come up with and used many times over the course of my personal life—”It ain’t a party unless I’m late to it.” I like to think that I have my ear to the ground and a finger on the pulse when it comes to metal, but the truth is we all have our little bubbles that we live in. We might visit one another and bounce from bubble to bubble, or sometimes admire someone else’s bubble from afar (get your mind out of the gutter), but at the end of the day, you simply can’t be everywhere at once, and as a result, sometimes things just slip through the cracks.
Such was the case for me with U.K. death metal veterans Benediction, whose name I’ve seen floating around forever but who I am ashamed to say I just never got around to checking out for one reason or another. Until now, that is, and boy howdy, have I been doing myself a major disservice. Yeah, yeah, I know, I fucked up. Minus three scene cred points for old Tommy boy. But hey, better late than never, right? And not for nothing, but speaking as someone who only just recently started doing his homework on this band in order to familiarize myself with their sound, I must say, their newest album Ravage of Empires serves as a rock-solid introduction, one that sinks its hooks into you right away and does not let go until the very end.
I could wax poetic and use all sorts of flowery language to dress it up, but there’s really no better way to describe this album outside of stating the obvious—This shit is just plain fun, simple as that. It perfectly blurs the line between thrash and death metal, making it all but impossible to tell where one train of thought ends and the other begins. Circle pit-inducing riffs abound from start to finish, and I do mean that literally. The opening track “A Carrion Harvest” wastes absolutely no time in dropping the listener headfirst into a maelstrom of tremolo picking and D-beats, and from there every single song runs the gamut of quintessential thrash grooves. If you can’t find something on Empires that doesn’t put a smile on your face and make your head start bobbing involuntarily, then frankly, I got nothing for ya, boss.
The main thing that stands out about this album to me is just how easy it is to listen to; it’s groovy and heavy as hell, for sure, but at no point does it ever feel overbearing or up its own ass, nor does it ever slack and allow itself to get comfortable then start coasting. Instead, it knows exactly where and what it wants to be, finds the pocket, and then just … stays there. Pedal to the metal, needle in the red, and straight on through the night. It certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel or anything, but it does what it does impeccably well, laying into every single riff and groove with the kind of practiced precision that only comes with decades of experience and genuine passion. It’s accessible and easily digestible, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it formulaic or, god forbid, predictable. Like I said before, it’s just good old-fashioned beer-crushing, headbanging, eardrum-compromising fun. That’s the word I keep coming back to, and damn it, that’s what I’m sticking with. I mean, really, do you even need anything else?
I mean, yeah, it would have been nice to have a guitar solo or two for good measure, but honestly, that would have just been the cherry on top, since the way that all of the songs are arranged doesn’t leave much in the way of open space. It’s not like there are any droll, droning segments that drag on for too long or extended instrumental sections; everything moves along at a steady, perfectly reasonable pace, and there is enough structural variety from song to song to keep things from feeling repetitive or derivative. A dive bomb here and there would have been cool, but the absence of shredding doesn’t detract from what’s already there—The riffs are already strong enough to carry the album on their own merit, so there’s no sense in over-egging the cake when it’s perfectly fine as is.
Longtime fans who have been following this band since their inception (seriously, they’ve been around for as long as I’ve been alive, I really dropped the ball on this one, mea culpa) might have a better frame of reference to nitpick and hold it under a microscope, but then again, sometimes a fresh perspective is exactly what’s needed to look at something from a purely objective standpoint. Every scientific study needs a control group lest the data become compromised and unreliable, so as a fresh-faced newcomer, I am of the informed and not-so-humble opinion that this shit absolutely rips. Bold, I know, but somebody had to say it. Benediction sure know how to have a good time, and even though I showed up woefully late to the party, I’m still grabbing a red solo cup and hitting the keg just the same, and I suggest you do too.
Ravage of Empires premieres today via Nuclear Blast Records, order your copy here.
