Konkhra

Nothing Is Sacred

Written by: AB on 13/02/2009 16:46:11

The Danish death metal scene has seen a lot of new releases during the later years, from new death metal bands and veterans alike. The quality has ranged between the horrible (Dawn of Demise - "Hate Takes Its Form", Thorium - "Feral Creation"), over the promising (Crocell - "The God We Drowned") to the good (Spectral Mortuary - "From Hate Incarnated") and finally to the excellent (Exmortem - "Funeral Phantoms"). Now Konkhra, one of the veteran DM bands in Denmark has released their 7th full length opus, "Nothing Is Sacred", and it shall be interesting to see where they place themselves in the Danish death metal spectrum. Now Konkhra has, as said, been around for long, but they are not a band whose music I'm familiar with - I have a distant memory of listening to their "Weed Out The Weak" album back in the days, but I can't remember anything specific.

Well, it seems like I haven't really missed out. "Nothing Is Sacred" starts out with the one minute long opener, "Prelude to Perversion", where one can hear what appears to be a speech by a certain Mr. Bush, 'cleverly' manipulated to include gold like "the American flag stands for overt scandals, recession, stock market declines, blackmail, terror, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting off tongues, and rape" and "tonight I have a message to the people of Iraq: go home and die". No, it's not clever. No, you don't 'unmask America for what it really is' or whatever you think you're doing. It's not even funny. Such crap belongs nowhere - no, not even in the worst of crappy angry punk bands out there - and it kinda sets the bar for the music to come.

This is totally uninspired death/thrash. I don't encounter any memorable riffs, there are a few good, but not great, solos scattered among the tracks, the drumming isn't bad, but isn't good either, the lyrics follow the path set in the intro, and the vocals are hideous. And not hideous in a Pete Helmkamp (Angelcorpse) or Jeff Walker (Carcass) good kind of hideous, but hideous like a guy who can't growl and instead sounds like he's burping/yelling really loudly down in the mic. Crap. The vocals are, except for the lyrics, the worst thing on the album.

Even though all the songs more or less sounds the same throughout the album, all is not bad. The instrument handling is competent without being great. However, when Konkhra gets their shit together, they can put out some good, groovy death/thrash - "Breathe the Fear" should get most heads nodding, album closer "The Promise of Antagonism" starts rather well with some good soloing and lots of speed - everything dies horribly though when some totally misplaced clean female voice suddenly coming out of nowhere - in the end of the last track, it haven't been used before. wtf.

Though not as bad as Dawn of Demise/Thorium, Konkhra suffers from the same problems (at least the biggest problem) of these to Danish DM bands - shit vocals. Add to this that while "Nothing Is Sacred" is technically executed fine, everything is so lifeless and, frankly boring. It seems like none of the band members want to do this record, but have to. Konkhra really should reevaluate how they spend their free time - do we really need this?

5

Download: Breathe the Fear
For the fans of: Dew-Scented, Hatesphere
Listen: MySpace

Release date: 02.02.2009
Chopshop Records

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