The Red Chord – Clients (Metal Blade)
A wonderful mix of grindcore, math metal, and death metal with touches of hardcore. This is heavy and complex. The vocals are usually screamed and growled but you can understand him half the time. They mix up many different heavy sounds like few other bands. This is their 2nd album. Think Burnt By the Sun or Cephalic Carnage.
1. Fade in feedback with vague vocal samples before ripping into brutal and fast grindcore. There are a few too many cheap guitar squeals for my taste. The chorus if that’s what you can call it, is somewhat melodic and hardcore sounding.
**2. Starts with straightforward thrashing metal riff. The track gets more complicated and has a number of rhythm changes. Straight forward breakdown.
3. A bit more techie with lots of guitar squeals and runs. Reminds me more of Dilinger Escape Plan. Some spoken vocals.
4. Slower chugging sound which changes into melodic hardcore. Ends with long slow breakdown.
**5. Quick, short, nice.
**6. Straightforward with nice start-stop parts and a good number of different sounds, speeds, and changes. There is a very quiet, clean guitar interlude in the middle of the track. They get out of it with guitar solos.
7. Bursts of speed and a more guitar squeals to the point of sounding silly. Ugh.
**8. Very different guitar sound to begin, but it’s only around for a few seconds. Lots of changes, like a lot of the tracks.
9. Melodic death metal with some stop-n-go parts. Short jazzy breakdown.
10. Straight forward.
11. Slower, more melodic, longer and more metal sounding. Nice melodic guitar solo with some sampled vocals. Mostly silent for the last minute. There is a fuck in the ending spoken word section.
Good stuff. -mph