LEFT CROSS
LEFT CROSS “Upon Desecrated Altars”
By Dr. Abner Mality
Right now, the death metal world belongs to either cavemen or nuclear physicists, with very little inbetween. The music is either Stone Age primitivism or geeky super-technicality. You can put Richmond, VA’s LEFT CROSS firmly in the first category. This is so savage and primitive, it’s not even Neanderthal, it’s more like homo erectus.
But it works! These guys play a very murky, extreme type of death metal that greatly resembles war metal, often reaching incendiary speeds. But unlike most war metal, these guys never lose sight of the riff. In fact, they worship it. The result is something like old BENEDICTION or BOLT THROWER but played at the speed and ferocity of ANGELCORPSE. The chunkiness of the hooks is apparent from the first and the result is neck-breaking. The vocals are definitely also in the war metal/cavernous vein, with tons of echo and sinister intonation.
All the songs are effective, but the middle of the album provides the most crushing blows. The title track, “Unbinding The Covenant” and especially “Inexorable March” mix slower doom crunch and the full aggression of war into something that really smokes. A couple of tracks sound kind of generic, but this is nowhere near as formless or monotonous as typical war metal.
LEFT CROSS hits like a RIGHT UPPERCUT here...they should do fine with the rest of the rapidly expanding caveman death metal wave.