With the onslaught of new releases from Bombworks Records lately, one begins
to wonder if they might be sacrificing quality for quantity. Well, so far that hasn't been the case. And with
this new Ukrainian band, Requital, we continue to be crushed with great extreme metal!
Requital plays a very aggressive and chaotic brand of death/grind. The "band" is
actually a one-man side project of the vocalist/guitarist of Holy Blood (another great Ukrainian metal band). One would
probably never be able to tell this by listening to the album itself.
Right off the bat from the opening track, Requital just pounds you relentlessly. The guitars
are somewhat high-pitched, but still pack a powerful punch. The mega-fast riffing and grinding assault,
mixed with the screaching and wailing are very addicting. Add to that a great deal of blasting and killer vocals and
you have an album that will definitely get your blood pumping.
Vocally, Requital mixes it back and forth between some great death vocals and some totally
awesome scream/shrieking vocals. Kinda reminds me of the alternating that Vomitorial Corpulence used to do, but without the
mega-processing of the death vocals. Since this is the Holy Blood vocalist, you will notice a big similarity between
the vocals of the two bands, although Requital utilizes the death vocals more, where Holy Blood uses the scream/shriek vocals
more. Requital also uses the occasional semi-clean vocals ala Biogenesis in track 3 and ala Metanoia in track 7.
Some of the high points on the disc include the opening riff to track number 3, which flat out
rules. And track number four...which I had hesistations in liking at first. They do this chanting of "Oi,
Oi, Oi, Oi!" over and over during the song. At least I'm guessing that's what they are saying. Anyways...it almost sounds
like they are barking or something. Regardless, that entire song just stuck in my brain from the first listen and
after listening to the entire album, that always seems to be the song I remember. I guess the biggest low point
would be that a few of the songs sound kinda similar. Not a big negative since the songs are pretty good,
but often I get confused which track I'm on.
I'm reviewing a promo version of this album, so I don't have packaging or lyrics or anything,
so I'll have to comment on that later once I get the full release. But my initial opinion is that although this may
not be a blockbuster metal album, it is a very solid release that should get some decent playing time in any death/grind
fan's collection. (Review by Matt)
