{"id":96588,"date":"2022-10-28T00:00:39","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T23:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=96588"},"modified":"2022-11-02T16:03:49","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T16:03:49","slug":"album-review-dead-cross-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-dead-cross-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"DEAD CROSS – II (2022) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

DEAD CROSS
II<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nIpecac Recordings (2022)<\/span>
Rating: 9\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s time to brace yourself once again for another sonic tour de force through the darkest depths of punk, hardcore, crossover and whatever else you find while digging around the second full-length outing from the maniacal Dead Cross.<\/p>\n

Of course, any band which the legendary Mike Patton fronts is going to rip your face off, so with Dead Cross you\u2019ve just gotta latch onto whatever flow you can find and go with it. However, prepare for some serious jabs to the ribs, an abundance of crashing waves to the limbs, a plethora of tortured screams to the ears, occasional drilling to the skull, epileptic fits, clanking riffage to the kneecaps, brutal bass workouts to the spine, percussion that just batters you to a pulp and eventual submission to a barrage of discordant tracks that are both brooding and jarring.<\/p>\n

Eight listens in and I\u2019m still marvelling at the neurotic guitar tone and yet caressed by Patton\u2019s vocal spatter on a track such as \u2018Animal Espionage\u2019. Dead Cross is the sort of band I\u2019d want to see headlining a festival that features the long forgotten God, the experimental Scorn, old Napalm Death and a spoken word session from Jello Biafra before making way for NoMeansNo; Dead Cross has that kind of vibe.<\/p>\n

Justin Pearson\u2019s bass just clanks throughout; it\u2019s not a musical instrument, it\u2019s an instrument of audible torture and when put alongside Dave Lombardo\u2019s percussion it has to be the most formidable tag team in music today \u2013 dank, sinister and downright bruising.<\/p>\n

The hyper \u2018Heart Remover\u2019 flashes towards Cryptic Slaughter and nods to my youth as a hardcore aficionado, and yet there are those doomy, lumbering segments which separate it. We expect those frantic, up-tempo fits, yet we can never grasp them when they arrive. \u2018Ants And Dragons\u2019 boasts varying shades of grey yet remains abrasive and foreboding, while \u2018Christian Missile Crisis\u2019 is a full on demonic thrash outburst barking with Slayer<\/a> menace and elasticated vocal sneers, and then there\u2019s the sonic assault of \u2018Strong And Wrong\u2019, a truly violent hardcore ode of double team vocal yaps and tormented torrents of instrumental abuse. But you can cherry pick any composition on this opus and be blown away by the mocking, cynical brutality.<\/p>\n

\u2018Love Without Love\u2019 is probably the most subtle track here and nods towards Patton\u2019s Mr Bungle, or even Faith No More, but married to, say, Carnivore. And there\u2019s so much more, a dark well of ideas well-stirred frantically to result in an impenetrable brew. \u2018Nightclub Canary\u2019 is volatile hardcore punk, \u2018Reign Of Error\u2019 again hints at toxic thrash, and \u2018Imposter Syndrome\u2019 scurries like Yeah Yeah Yeahs on a rollercoaster nosedive into Hell and littered with creepy narrations and brooding psychosis.<\/p>\n

You knew what was coming but didn\u2019t\u2026 you couldn\u2019t really prepare for such a beating; this second release being another raw, hurried and demented offering that\u2019s darkly humorous but built upon the rabid constructions of Mike Crain\u2019s colossal riffs. Dead Cross is a ferocious beast under whichever guise it sporadically takes on. The big question is, are you willing to put your head in such a blender?<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DEAD CROSSII Ipecac Recordings (2022)Rating: 9\/10 It\u2019s time to brace yourself once again for another sonic tour de force through the darkest depths of punk, hardcore, crossover and whatever else you find while digging around the second full-length outing from the maniacal Dead Cross. Of course, any band which the legendary Mike Patton fronts is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,3662],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-dead-cross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96589,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96588\/revisions\/96589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}