Review: UNBLESSED “Killing your last drop of Innocence”

UNBLESSED “Killing your last drop of Innocence”
Australis Records

Well, I thought quite long time if I should write review of stuff which isn’t released yet. But since Paul said “NO PROBLEM, just do it!” my doubts didn’t exist anymore. If member of the band says like that then for me it’s clear as a day that I can do it without risk of some troubles. So here you’ll find some words about both the band and their newest work.

UNBLESSED was formed in capital city of Chile (Santiago de Chile) year 1999 to fuse Black Metal with Gothenburg Death Metal style, but between influences which guys number we can find bands which rather haven’t anything to do with Gothenburg style. By the way, since beginning they had serious problems with line-up – musicians came and left the band quite often. Effect is that the only original member is here Paul Callahan (guit and since 2007 voc). Except him quite long experience in the band has bassist Jonathan Reign who takes his position since 2006. Two other members (second guitarist Benjamin Monsaleve and drummer Gonzalo Townsend) are totally new here. But at least in case of Gonzalo it doesn’t mean that he’s greenhorn – since 2001, with some breaks, he plays in Brutal Death Metal act AZATHOTH. Honestly, he does it also in other two bands: Death Metal: EXTRACOTPOREAL DISGORGE and GRAVERED, but these bands exist not so long, so…

Anyhow, ‘Killing Your Last Drop of Innocence’ is forth full-length of Chileans. Except that they released EP (which first was just a digital demo) ‘Monolith from Beyond’, participated in split with ARCHAIC WINTER and MELANKOLY. Some maniacs had also possibility to watch two DVD. By the way, on newest album we can hear intro, outro and ten songs. Musically we have here to do definitely with Death Metal which is touched by Black. But this touch in my opinion isn’t huge and not so natural- at least not prima facie. It’s more about atmosphere, maybe sound in some way than about riffs and stuff like that But when I’m writing atmosphere I don’t mean what some (I think that the most) of you connote with this word and maybe even afraid of. We haven’t any keyboards or something like that here! Music is brutal and mostly in middle-fast or even fast tempo. Riffs are fast and rather various. They don’t change very, very often, but enough often to make listener interesting in what Chilean serve us. We can notice also something what we can call solos and other technical tricks. To make long story short, Paul and Benjamin do very good job! Well, it’s also about Jonathan and Gonzalo. Of course we can hear much more clearly instrument of this second one. He drums mostly in quite fast tempo. But there’re changes of it, passages, we hear cymbals very often.

As I already mentioned since 2007 Paul’s duty is also to take care about vocalises. As we can suppose this is wild growling. Of course it’s not doing whole the time in rthe same way. Changes aren’t easy to recognize, but they’re! It can remind some more well-known vocalists, but these of you who read my reviews know that I rarely use names in this case.

On the end I’ll tell you only that this is good album of good band. Everybody who likes Death with elements (in this case rather touches) of Black Metal should look forward ‘Killing Your Last Drop of Innocence’ in my opinion! OH… Guys plan their European tour next year, so at least some of you will be able to see them live what I recommend.