Black Breath, Sentenced to Life

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a rabid fan of Black Breath from the first moment I heard their debut EP, Razor to Oblivion. The evidence of my man crush is all over this site. Every album since that debut has only added fuel to the fire, delivering Entombed influenced death metal infused with a crusty, punk vibe. The Seattle band’s latest helping, Sentenced to Life, is not only a continuation of what we heard on their first LP, Heavy Breathing, but also an opportunity to hear the band start injecting some of their own thoughts and ideas into the pile-driving mayhem found within these ten songs.

The first thing you notice on the opening track “Feast of the Damned” — besides the absolutely frenzied aural attack — is that the guitars aren’t quite as buzzed out as previous albums. Thanks to Kurt Ballou and his GodCity Studios, the sound is crisper yet not over produced and so much more forceful and intense. Sure Black Breath still carry the Entombed flag high, but the production is a bit cleaner for the better. I love the drum tone and position in the mix throughout this album. It’s in your face without completely overtaking every other member’s spot. An increased element of gang/group shouts is an awesome touch to many of the songs giving you an opportunity to growl along with the band.

Enough technical crap, let’s get to the music.

The title track builds slowly for a brief moment before absolutely pulverizing your cranium with barbaric drum work and thundering base. Holy hell this song shreds. “Forced Into Possession” is already a frenzied and ferocious attack, but the barbaric pounding of the drums around the 1:31 mark as the guitars step aside gets me pretty damned amped. “Home of the Grave” settles things into a steady, chugging groove that gives you an opportunity to catch up after the opening triad of tracks. The guitars to this track could have been pulled off of Entombed’s Stranger Aeons EP. “Endless Corpse” is the first time on this album that we hear the guys start to experiment with their own sounds. Atmospheric and bleak, the song starts off slowly, building over the first minute and a half to a huge scream and frenzied attack of whirling drums and feral riffage.

I hope you didn’t get to comfortable with the slower presentation of “Endless Corpse” as the next song up, “Mother Abyss” is one of the more aggressively delivered tracks you’ll hear on this album while “Of Flesh” is one of the catchier, more infectious — it’s chorus is just begging for you to scream along with. The combo of those two tracks may be the strongest on the disc.

Closing up this ferocious sophomore release (what slump?) is “Obey,” the most experimental and atmospheric song on Sentenced to Life. It shows that the band is capable of so much more and could be a hint of some things we could expect in future releases. As it stands, however, Sentenced is the band’s strongest album to date. It delivers the goods forcibly and with an extreme amount of intensity. I haven’t been able to review any other albums since putting this one in the stereo.