(dies irae)

whoa! this is fucking awesome! one of the best records I've reviewed for the zine so far, this is exactly the kind of music that I really love, you can't really say it is one genre or another cos they have come up with something so fresh sounding, but still with loads of appeal for fans of heavy & brutal extreme music! shame there aren't so many bands I would put on a similar level as this! dim mak features 3 members of the legendary ripping corpse (minus erik rutan who is now in hate eternal), so if you've heard that band, that should give you some idea of where they are coming from! essentially it's a combination of ideas influenced mainly by death metal and hardcore, but with a bit of a jazziness to the whole thing! despite this, I wouldn't simply label them a death-core band. hmm, this is a tricky one, I don't really know where to begin when trying to describe the actual content of the record. ok, the production on here is fucking great, it's got a good, clear sound to it, you can hear exactly what is going on at all times, and the drummer has a cool clanky snare sound which I like, though I think it might annoy a few people! I think the record is made even more effective by this clear production, as the riffs are a hell of a lot more direct, cos you can hear every single note, and cos they are such awesomely inventive riffs, this has much more impact than if the guitar work was buried behind the usual shredding extreme metal sound. cos these guys shred so much on their instruments they don't need over-the-top production to create an intense atmosphere. the drumming is insane, yet very tasteful and appropriate, with great use of dynamics (so it's not all played as loud as possible), total pinpoint accuracy. as far as the guitar goes there's some very tricky and twisted riffs going on here, but without turning into a blur of notes, even the fastest parts are still recognizable riffs. musically, there's all kindsa stuff going on, creepy, twisted parts, cool groovy "hardcore" sorta riffs (well, maybe like the weirder parts of vision of disorder, but I'm reluctant to say that even v.o.d. is actually hardcore! I dunno what it is. metalcore?), mad bouncy fast riffs, at times it is very erratic sounding. oh yeah, and the vocals are a weird but catchy hardcore-ish shouty style! at the end of the day, it's the catchy-as-fuck songwriting that I really love about this one! fuck, check this record out!