Five of the darkest and heaviest bands from the UK have been brought together to bring us one of the craziest releases of this year.
You just know Split Roast isn’t going to be all smiles, sunshine and skipping through meadows, this EP is going to be pure brutality from the offset.
Colonel Blast kick off the proceedings with ‘Power By Proxy’ and ‘The Crime Is Passion’; for those who did have some doubt of how the new material would sound due to the change in vocalist, fear no more, as the pace first set by For The Greater Good carries on with the combination of progressive and death metal coming together for a strong opening salvo.
Cancerous Womb continue the high standards of death metal with the lovingly titled ‘From Gunt To Cunt’- and if you don’t know what the former is, google it IF YOU DARE- with great guitar riffs and vocals that feel like at any moment vomit will be spewed anywhere.
Cancerous also give a taste of their live show with ‘Austrian Basement’ carrying on the tradition of Mr Fritzl being used in some form by death metal bands and come with a high recommendation to see them if they come near you.
Magpyes’ contributions tend to veer on an extreme metal tug of war as the first three songs, including the title Lord Ov Swords -because changing words to have a v in them is mocking the kvlt metallers (!)- take a grindcore mentality until Willem Fucking Defoe tries to lengthen it but it becomes longer than it needs to be. Stick to the short bursts of grindcore in all fairness.
Dyscapthia then begin their set with a short piano intro, which was slightly unexpected, before their tech mixed with death and a little smidgen of grind kicks in and brings the extreme side back onto the right path.
As we end the journey with Disacorium bringing us their balance of technical and extreme metal, halfway through a weird piano based interlude kicks in; whether it is to give the listener a chance to breathe or not I’m not quite sure, but we return to form with Reduction To The Absurd and finally closing things out with a industrial remix that is slightly baffling as to why it was included.
Split Roast however manages to showcase five of the best underground bands the UK has to offer and at only a price of £5 it is a great bargain to support Condate Records.
