Resurgency/Desolator
Split

I have a hunch that split records were much more common back in the day when music was played on black big round things that you put an arm with a needle down on and music then came out of the speakers. When you could play one side and then needed to change to another side, nowadays it seems like things like splits are mostly seen in the death metal world and the primitive one at that which is why I do not find it that strange that my first ever split review for Hallowed is one of those albums. Before starting to write this I filled the website template and noticed the album cover artist made by some polish bloke, it is truly pathetic. What about the music then, is it pathetic as well?

Well, it probably depends on your preference but it is so called old school death metal, primitive death metal some might also call it. Uncompromising, heavy, evil and all of that, it sounds more or less the same for all bands despite them not compromising. Sure that is simplifying it a bit but you catch my drift, these two bands sounds like fairly typical bands of the genre, not much in terms of surprising in their music as it is just ordinary death metal. Resurgency has however managed to come up with a better production than their split pals, it sounds a bit more modern and more focused on the music, Desolator has a bit of a rawer sound, I would say that it almost sounds a bit unfinished. But as an overall thing the nine tracks and 31 minutes of music offers nothing that will surprise anyone.

I think the music of Resurgency is quite average death metal, nothing fancy here, good production and sound but it sort of stops there with songs that sounds just like anything else out there, I could say Morbid Angel or Vader and you would believe me, it sounds exactly like those bands. I am actually quite bored from the end of the first song and onwards when hearing the Resurgency songs. It is more unpredictable to call the outcome if you shoot yourself in the head with a shotgun, but in a way that is a problem with the genre as it is quite hard to vary with all those rigid codes of conduct.

Desolator has a sound that is pure and utter garbage, their songs are however still more interesting than the ones from Resurgency, they have more character, more diversity and some funny spoken word parts like “your god doesn’t live here” and the sound of an impaling, fantastic. Overall though it is a bit detrimental for any kind of brain to listen to such a poor sound for an extended period of time and they also do have the least interesting singer I have heard in a long time, such a raven’s croak it sounds like. Well we are soon to see an album from Desolator from Hellthrasher so why not wait and see what that holds before even thinking about this split.

I think the split idea is not such a good one, I think the concepts and the qualities of the bands are sort of erased when they are played after one another on a CD, maybe if it was on a vinyl record and you had to change side before hearing the other band it could work. The bands will just float together as they are so similar and no one who isn’t a regular death metal fanatic will hear that there is a new band taking over from the first. But the main problem is not that, it is the fact that the entire thing is a work of boredom and I become sleepy as hell when listening to it. I actually think that this CD will go into the medicine locker along with the other hypnotics from a company that will remain nameless because of them not paying us to mention their name. So a product made as a hypnotic that will now take its place in the medicine locker along with hypnotics of brand X.