{"id":97804,"date":"2023-02-03T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T00:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=97804"},"modified":"2023-02-03T10:20:04","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T10:20:04","slug":"album-review-memoriam-rise-to-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-memoriam-rise-to-power\/","title":{"rendered":"MEMORIAM – Rise To Power (2023) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEMORIAM
Rise To Power<\/strong><\/span>
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\nReaper Entertainment (2023)<\/span>
Rating: 8.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Grinding their gears through a fifth instalment is UK death metallers Memoriam. With Rise To Power<\/em> we again find ourselves in the trenches with the ghosts of Bolt Thrower as vocalist Karl Willetts drags his men through the bloodstained mud in search of victory.<\/p>\n

As expected, Memoriam\u2019s latest attack chugs, billows black smoke, and gutturally expresses its fury by way of a series of ashen, chugging riffs and Willetts\u2019 dust-coated larynx. The band probably won\u2019t thank me for using words such as \u201cprolific\u201d, \u201cconsistent\u201d and \u201creliable\u201d, but for me Memoriam is very much a required constant in a genre that is expressing more murky versatility than ever before. So every now and then it\u2019s just nice to sit back and be bludgeoned by old school themes, cover art and musical drubbing.<\/p>\n

Naturally, the key here is the titanic riffage which just belches like an old chimney that coats the landscape in its vomited powder. Couple this with the crushing percussion of Spikey T. Smith and the driving bass of Frank Healy and you\u2019ve got a militant traipse through boggy fields where bodies lay like discarded litter and the pallid sky grows darker with every melodious storm.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only natural that the feel of this colossal record will occasionally lean towards UK hardcore elements. Grit, determination and confrontation are the main ingredients behind this steamroller as gargantuan tomes such as \u2018Never Forget, Never Again (6 Million Dead)\u2019 and \u2018This Pain\u2019 drag you through a series of gruelling historic events where Willetts\u2019 brutal narrations act as stark reminders to a past we must never remove from our watered down minds. Meanwhile, \u2018All Is Lost\u2019 grinds like an unstoppable tank in the heart of the combat zone where stark entwining passages provide extra bleakness to work in tandem with monstrous gnashing rhythms.<\/p>\n

That bruising, organic Britishness drives this record through the mountains of ash as the black smouldering silt of \u2018Total War\u2019 sees the crust-caked combo mightily charge with hammering percussion as strains of Bolt Thrower\u2019s The IVth Crusade<\/em> (1992) comes to fruition. Willetts\u2019 dehydrated coughs act as dry, pallid walls throughout; his gaping hole of a mouth seethes like a furnace gasping for more bones to chomp on.<\/p>\n

Rise To Power<\/em> is a groove-based death machine that coughs, splatters and chugs in accordance to its own wheezing lungs; ever punishing, ever riveting but delivered with the utmost sincerity and emotion as a war torn vessel. The battle ever rages on and yet Memoriam stands tall upon the wastelands of grime, gore and ash.<\/p>\n

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

MEMORIAMRise To Power Reaper Entertainment (2023)Rating: 8.5\/10 Grinding their gears through a fifth instalment is UK death metallers Memoriam. With Rise To Power we again find ourselves in the trenches with the ghosts of Bolt Thrower as vocalist Karl Willetts drags his men through the bloodstained mud in search of victory. As expected, Memoriam\u2019s latest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,3989],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97804","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=97804"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97814,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97804\/revisions\/97814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}