Review Summary: Bang your fucking head
Black Breath -
Sentenced To Life
Alright, you f
ucks… what we got here on
Sentenced to Life are ten lessons on how to bang your head so goddamn hard, your brain eventually turns into a nicely whipped up grey matter smoothie. Okay, that might sound a little extreme, but the shear amount of heavy f
ucking metal that is packed into the playing time of Black Breaths sophomore album
Sentenced to Life makes it nearly impossible to for any living thing within a one hundred meter diameter to not start inducing themselves into fits of metallic hysteria. How the hell these five guys came from strictly NW hardcore bands is beyond me, because even the most lax music critic can sense some seriously Entombed daddy issues going on with this Seattle based death metal/hardcore hybrid. Debut album
Heavy Breathing did the job of crafting some of the sickest riffs of the 2010 year, right from the opening seconds of “Black Sin”, to the heavy as f
uck breakdown of “I Am Beyond”, Black Breath became a household name for any fan of early 90s death metal and modern mosh-heavy hardcore. With
Sentences to Life, put out by Southern Lord, Black Breath continue to pulverize their listeners and continue essentially where
Heavy Breathing left off; wasting no time in bringing the head band back in opening track “Feast of the Damned”.
The overall theme of
Sentenced to Life isn’t to somehow reimagine or reinvent death metal to accommodate the styling of hardcore (or vice versa), even though they do that with almost absurd ease, but is basically to bring the f
ucking party. Incredibly catchy anthems found in the likes of “Home of the Grave” and “Mother Abyss” accentuates thrash metal ala Anthrax and Slayer, combining them with the blackened mess of acts like Dishammer and Toxic Holocaust; both a nod to early predecessors, while still remaining firmly planted in the present. While other acts like Nails or Trap Them seem content in finding the middle ground between crust and grind, Black Breath’s ingenuity comes in their apparent disregard for trailblazing into new musical territory and simply having a fun ass time.
Sentenced to Life won’t complicate the listener with any pretension of experimentation or obscure left field pitches into uncharted territory, but shoots for being one of the most entertaining straight up “metal” albums this year has given us so far. Find yourself in a pit with these guys playing and be ready to get f
ucked up.
