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Album review; Bilocate “Sudden Death Syndrome”

Posted on September 5, 2008 in the News category

Bilocate are an unsigned Jordanian metal band with a penchant for the dark and brutal. They class themselves as a Dark Oriental metal band and there are certainly a lot of influences from black and progressive death metal in their music without plagarising any of their influences too much. Compared to bands like Opeth for the technicality of their songs, Paradise Lost and Katatonia for the gothic influences and My Dying Bride for the sheer brutality, their middle eastern influences are what make this band unique.

The opening song off their sophomore album “Humans & the Dark Affiliation” brings in this truly unique feel, introducing a heavy darkness that carries through into “Blooded Forest”, a 17-minute epic song which is where the Opeth comparisons will inevitably be drawn. This song carries the brilliant musicianship of this band up on high, switching from dark, chugging riffs to speedy solos, Paradise Lost-esque piano breakdowns and a lenthy outro, with Ramzi Essayed’s impressive death metal vocals sounding like the roar of a bear after 20 years of smoking Marlborough Reds, without every feeling too lengthy. Track three “The Dead Sea” is a quirky number, a cheeky piano ditty/guitar playoff leading into a very fucked up evil sounding track. The doom influences are well and truly established by here and then “Ebtahal” comes along to bring some relief to the brutality. A very creepy instrumental intro leads very uneasily into a spoken word section before Ramzi comes along and again brings the brutality to a 9 minute long doom-laden track. “Inocluate” is where the middle eastern influences really shine through 2 minutes in, and make this band unique because of the way they blend and distort eastern and western musical influences together in such an interesting way, technical metal heads should scratch their noodles at how this works, but it does indeed work. Very well. Outro “The Stone Of Hate” is a very moody instumental piece that eases off the chaos and closes the album brilliantly on a fittingly dark note. There is a fantastic trance-like quality to this song which makes the journey complete.

Bilocate aren’t going to win around people who don’t like or at least have an interest in blackened progressive death metal. A lot of heavy metal fans might find this hard to digest at first, these guys are taking no prisoners at all. Sudden Death Syndrome is a very dark, heavy and brutal album, not radio friendly in the slightest. But if you are interested in a band that are definately very talented and truly unique, check these guys out at their myspace and their website.

[[OxKing]]

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