Friday, July 28, 2006

CD Review: Mitra’s All Gods Kill

By Todd Maternowski

Mitra's first real album is an impressive piece of work, successfully blending the speed and fury of thrash with the more bluesy sound of old-school metal rock. For a relatively new band, borne from the ashes of several great metal bands such as Speedealer and Rigor Mortis, the production values on the CD are also surprisingly effective: Clearly this was not recorded in a basement on someone's answering machine and packaged as an album. If All Gods Kill is any indication, Mitra has a long and brilliant career in front of them.

Like a good job interview or blind date, it's important to make a lasting first impression, and Mitra does that admirably with the opening track "Dead to Rights." Nothing gets a metalhead in the metal mood like a blast drum and scorching vocals, and "Dead to Right" delivers the goods. Lead singer Kurt Grayson quickly establishes his presence right away with his Corey Taylor-esque ability to seamlessly go from deep, menacingly quiet vocals to razorblade-in-the-throat, lung-bursting screaming.

From there on the album only gets better. The rest of the songs showcase the band's wide-ranging list of influences. Despite the sheer emotional fury lyrically present in every track, there are some surprisingly good slower more molasses-based metal on the album in the grinding, grungy "Grudge." Slightly more up-tempo, but not lacking the lead singer's demonic screaming are "Your New God," "War Horse" and the blisteringly anti-Christian ballad "Crucifixed." It's unlikely you'll be seeing Mitra on the karaoke lists alongside Kelly Clarkson and Ryan Cabrera (although you never know - not too many could have predicted the mainstreaming of metal's legendary Metallica and Black Sabbath). In fact, the tortured vocals on "Violence is Golden" sound less like Hetfield and more like a pit fiend with his left nut in a vicegrip.

Throughout every song on the album the vocals are unpredictable, sweeping from the sing-alongable "Things Are About To Get Ugly" to the inhuman and back again.

Probably the best tracks on All Gods Kill are those in which the band leaves the extremes of the genre and plays old-fashioned blues-influenced metal, in "SRB" and fast-tempo thrash in "Medicate Me," "The Cleaner" and "Let 'Em Bleed." These are easily the most accessible tracks on the album, demonstrating the sheer musical power and ability in clean, tightly-arranged sets that seem designed specifically to whip live crowds into frenzied, bloodied masses of dismembered limbs and lost contact lenses. For an album with a musical ancestry steeped in Motorhead and Slayer, this too is clearly an album that needs to be played at top volume repeatedly.

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