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7 ago 2022

Axis - Unholy Resurrection (Review)

 

2022 Unholy Resurrection.

This is the first LP of the Mexican band Axis, who are not newbies, since they have been around for a few years and they show it with this cornerstone called Unholy Resurrection. A thrash with overtones of various other corners of metal such as black and groove (only at specific moments) but that does not detach itself from their main vein and offers us the perfect excuse to destroy yourself in the moshpit.

The mix is highly processed but, fortunately, enough to not (barely) feel like a compressed block of concrete, mostly like a solid cliff, a stone wall with cracks that give it that authentic overall tone. The drumming is captivatingly accurate, tight and has massive sound. The guitars and the bass tones is malevolent, menacing and fierce, but at the same time, it shows that it was a very cared feature of the whole result. The voice is an explosion of anger and evil that resonates throughout the songs as if it came from those cursed and prophane stone walls of the cliff. The riffs always hit the mark on their own, they're arranged as each song needs them, managing to create a perfect picture of atrocity, malice and despair. If there was one way to describe it, it would be with a journey through devilish and insane settings.

The experience when listening to the complete album is like entering a remote place in the mountains, a place where you already know that the bloodiest and most ruthless rituals take place, that sharp rocks, treacherous trails and desolate landscapes await you; but still you keep going because the promise of what you will find in the end. The album never disappoints, it really has no weak points and as you discover each passage, each more sinister than the previous one, you arrive at a macabre but captivating place before it closes with a flourish in which the ground cracks to open the doors of the same hell to which you are heading in free fall.

While the title track is certainly the core that encompasses the whole concept of what the band offers in this production, which together with "Cruciatibus Aeternam" and "Axis" form a truly unholy trinity on which the rest of the material is built, which expands like roots of a rotten tree in different twisted directions.

An instant favorite is “Domination Routine”, whose sections are seared into your flesh, with one of the most mesmerizing guitar solos of the album, followed by a surprise bass solo that delights the moshpit, just like “Altered Beast”, which is an evil and wild blast that becomes an epic piece on its own, is that theme that you are dying to experience live.

"Hate Game/The Punishment" grabs you by the skull and shakes it at its will, demonstrating that it really doesn't take too much to hypnotize a crowd eager to tear itself apart once the track really kicks in and turns into a merciless collection of riffs that lets you a glimpse of those sharpened edges of a sinister pentagram hidden in the darkness.

Back to the title track, is another example of that core of pure and hard battering that transforms into a maelstrom that plunges you into tides of chaos that paints a picture of sharp stones unwelcoming shores and a dark and hopeless sky. You feel like you're falling down in the same way that "Contradiction" pulls you into the depths, but even deeper than those tides, to an abyss below the ground, full of fire and endless desolation.

The album as a whole is pure evil written in stone and fire, brilliant from start to finish. As said before, it is difficult to find something to criticize, there are no filler, there is no rest but it does not become a repetitive or tiresome experience at all. Axis manages to carve out an identity with a very violent yet polished old school thrash style. A formula that doesn't need to be innovative to quench that bloodlust of yours, but who really needs complexity or intricate twists when you have a performance that sounds this perfect? Certainly not these guys.

The album is available directly through the band social media sites. Go and support them on:

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Listen to Unholy Resurrection on 

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