The Red Chord - Clients
Metal Blade
Extreme/ Technical/ Brutal Deathcore
11 songs (37:24)
Release year: 0
Metal Blade
Reviewed by Nathanael
Surprise of the month

One of Metal Blade’s most hyped and hopeful releases of 2005, Clients is definitely not an album that can be easily categorized into any pre-existing set genre. While elements of Hardcore, Grind, Brutal Death, and Thrash Metal are all apparent throughout this album, these elements are all bastardized and fused together into a demented metallic beast that is a challenging listen to say the least.

With a highly reputed debut release already under their belts, 2002’s Fused Together in Revolving Doors, The Red Chord have plans to push Extreme Metal to new heights, a task that Clients seems more than ready to take on.

Imagine what would happen if Cryptopsy and Vader had an illegitimate child who grew up listening to Massachusetts Hardcore and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what The Red Chord have to offer on Clients. A concept album focused on the unfortunate souls who make up society’s underbelly, to describe this album as aggressive would be a gross understatement.

Shifting from full-speed-ahead blasts mixed with shrieking, pinch-harmonic drenched quirky riffing to a more traditional Thrash assault, opener Fixation on Plastics sets the appropriate tone for the remainder of the album. Mixed with vocalist Guy Kozowyk’s hybrid Hardcore shouts that so effortlessly transform into low yet surprisingly well-pronounced Death growls, The Red Chord continue the assault with the more Thrash-inspired Lay the Tarp before grinding through Black Santa. While full-speed-ahead remains more or less the standard pace throughout the album, The Red Chord do succeed in slowing things down when they deem it necessary, a prime example being the tastefully subdued closing instrumental He Was Dead When I Got There.

In fact, these guys change pace so quickly and with so little warning that by the time you’ve become adjusted to a given passage they’ve already moved on to the next (hence the Cryptopsy comparison). This sort of dizzying technicality is both a blessing and a curse for The Red Chord. While it will leave you dumb-founded and wide-eyed, this sort of extreme-technicality renders the songs nearly structure less at times. While at first I thought Metal Blade separated the promo into ninety-nine tracks for copyright reasons, I am now starting to think that they did this so we reviewers could better absorb the album, which feels more like ninety-nine separate tracks fused and grouped together into eleven. That being said, I personally prefer Upper Decker’s jazzy start-stop variations over the rest of the tracks.

At the end of the day, this album is definitely not for everyone. If you enjoy extreme technicality mixed with extreme brutality, then by all means give The Red Chord many focused spins, but if you favor structure over balls-out technical prowess, this probably won’t appeal to you. Even still, few who hear this album will be able to deny The Red Chord’s undeniable ability to fuse all styles of Extreme Metal with such an uncompromising level of technical expertise. Impressive.

Killing Songs :
...Upper Decker...
Nathanael quoted 85 / 100
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