Time Signature Fall into time...

Genre: blackened death-grind

With a band who have named themselves after a genocidal famine that took place in Eastern Europe in the early 1930s, you know that things are not going to be rosy red. And, in any case, the very beginning of Holodomor's Témoignages de la Gnose Terrestre opening track 'Fall Into Time', which simply explodes into a frenzy of blastbeats, intense riffing and harsh vocals, should expel any misguided expectations of this not being extreme music.

Holodomor is classified as a black/thrash band on some of the leading metal websites, but, to my ears, their style sounds more like a hybrid of black metal, grindcore and a touch of death metal. Thus there are plenty of blastbeats and chaotic guitar solos, combined with the dissonance and darkness of much black metal. On top of this add harsh vocals – somewhere in between yelling and screaming – which further add intensity to the already quite intense music. There are a couple of riffs that might be considered more thrashy, but these are typically accompanied by blasting drums.

Whatever genre you want to apply to Témoignages de la Gnose Terrestre, the crux of the matter is that this is extreme and intense music, and fans of extreme metal - be it black, death, or grind – can look forward to seventeen minutes of intense and chaotic extreme metal.

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)