Brutart - Mimic (CD)

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Where does the nighttime end? (Fade) …Nice, straight-to-the-point question, one of the many aspects of existential anxiety, self-contempt and insomnia-generating introspection effectively contemplated by Blaz's phlegm-infested gargle of a Death Metal voice in BRUTART's quite impressive debut official release. Mimic comes neatly packaged in an A5 format digi-book, complete with a handful of evocative sketches whose deceivingly simple drawing style (courtesy of Vesna Rodman) does wonders to visualize the songs' bleak subject matters.
The Slovenian band's assault is shaped around a sound that mainly consists of non-stop, sludge-y, skull-crushing mid-tempo riffing that, more often than not, verges on the SABBATH side of all things metal. The twist is that the slow-building, heavy-grooving, often harmonizing, but never soloing guitars merely constitute the hypnotic, Doom-burdened counterpoint to their drummer's dominant even, if sometimes over-indulgent, performance. Sebastjan foams out a lava-flow of double-kicks, oddball time counts and inventive rolls, maniacally cymbal-accentuating almost everything possible in his way. It is this hysterical contrast between the disciplined, heavier-than-thou six-string squall and the busy, jittery kit-bashing that creates the suffocating tension lying at the core of such stunners as the fittingly rotten-sounding Termites, the grinding Immigrant, the snake-charming Desert or the addictively melodic album highlight The Verge.