Exhuman – Fear of Oneself (2010)

All the way from Italy, today we have Exhuman and their neck-breaking Death Metal that will help remove all the bad taste left from the inexperienced kiddies taking a whack at the genre. With catchy riffs, meaty hooks and overall flawless execution, this band uses the basic elements of the genre to craft seven highly addictive songs.

Death Metal is a genre full with uninspired bands and it’s refreshing to listen to a band that can hold your attention for over 30 minutes, the duration of this release. Exhuman does not do anything fancy or out of the ordinary, but yet, their music feels just right and creates a solid mixture of old school DM with nice solos and melodic hints.

Starting things off with the track “Pierce the Ground”, you can immediately hear crushing riffs and solid hooks, paired with tight drumming and inhuman growls. Using the traditional samples at the beginning of “Before the Burial”, we are treated to another headbanging piece that while having nothing innovative; it’s effective enough to get the mosh pit started. The album pretty much flows in the same vein, allowing the listener to quickly get into the nature of the songs.

The guitar work is excellent and in songs like “The Night Fall Down”, we are treated to some nice solos and an overall melodic approach to DM, but never going as far as considering this band melodic DM. With other songs like “War-Warm-Worms” and “Balance Out” we get a more straight forward DM that will please all fans of tightly crafted DM anthems. The bass guitar is a bit low in the mix, but you can still hear it pounding through songs.

Vocalwise, we don’t have much variation from the traditional growls, except in songs like “Absence of Sense” where we get a few screams here and there. Rounding up the mix, we have the very well execute drumming, that always keeps the music at the right pace and provides nice tempo switches within the songs.

In general, we wish more bands took Exhuman’s approach and just stick to the basics when it comes to DM. It’s not that hard to create catchy songs that are well crafted and not a repetition of what other bands have done over the years. We are looking forward to checkout what this band does in the future, in the mean time, we highly recommend you to get this self-released album and support this band.

Release: March 2010

Country: Italy