Review: Warmblood “Putrefaction Emphasis”

Experienced metalhead sometimes can only take a look on an album’s cover and tell you what music will be played in an album. Band’s country of origin can give some information also: British bands try to adhere genre features, Americans in contrary, to mix as much as they can, Germans play heavy riffs with precise rhythm, Scandinavians transmit the severe north atmosphere and Japans are shocking with their whips and tentacles. To the honor of the Italians, although they aren’t “metal” nation, I need to say that they created their own zest, which is special melody, no matter what genre they play. That’s exactly what I thought, when I got the fourth Italian band Warmblood album with threatening name ‘Putrefaction Emphasis’ and not less threatening cover.

An album opens with intro named “Intro (A Prayer)”, probably to distinguish it from hundreds other intros. Sound of footsteps, creak of floorboards, music box begins to play (very creepy… did someone ever heard the music box that doesn’t sounds creepy?) and the child voice says a prayer. This track here definitely not only to make more time in an album, and that’s not a worse intro that I heard, pronouncedly.

While listening to second track “Thousand Dead Eyes”, musicians image is forming more or less in listener’s mind: here we got a brutal vocalist. Two guitarists: one of them is death metal fan that create killer riffs; second one is a pride of a local conservatory, a ruler of gammas and arpeggios. Somewhere aside stands bassist, and the drummer is a long haired monster, that makes his sticks fly between cymbals and drums.

Acquaintance with line-up and the band’s biography, as usual, confirms some of the conjectures and refutes the others. Giancarlo Carpa combines powerful hypostases of vocalist and first guitarist. Davide Mazzoletti is the second guitarist-virtuoso. Also, there isn’t established bassist in a band: Graziano Demurtas helped the band with it. And the biggest surprise is a drummer Elena Carnavali. Her mastery of playing and interesting patterns are exciting.

The third track, “Unending Agony of Putrefaction” starts from thrashy riff. In general, despite the label “death metal”, the band demonstrates an extremely broad musical purview, filling out its music with diverse emphases and allusions to world heavy music. That’s also happened with this track: two-minutes reflections on which of the following segments of the song would fit into the legacy of the thrash metal legend, interrupted with the wild enthusiasm by Graziano Demurtas, whose head captured the H1Flea1 virus during the announced zombie-apocalypse, after which he brought down absolutely unexpected funk riff on listeners’ heads.  After recovering from that, it can be seen a reverence to Atheist‘s jazz-metal tradition. But, even that two-minutes fragment “Rage Against The Metallica” there would not be a chance to think about it: first of all the listener will need to collect his brains in a heap, and second is that next track is pure Armageddon named “Bloody Resurrection”, where the frontman throws into the battle with a fierce attitude. There are so much specters of extreme vocals in this track! Probably it fits the label “death metal” the most.

Then guitarist Davide Mazzoletti starts to play an instrumental “The Prophecy”, which is a first part of triptych “Cloister Of The Dead” (that continues with “The Bereavement” and “The Covenant Sinister”) – a culmination of an album. In this 11-minutes melodeath opus the strongest message of the band and the contents of its name are revealed: “warmblood” is generalized name of the half-blooded breeds of horses. So this band is a successor of European death, American thrash, neo-classical metal and Italian melody, harmonically uniting these elements in their music.

In addition to numerous musical influences, the disc is highlighted by considerable cinematography: eights track “Return To Dunwich” opens with emotional women’s speech in Italian, so I couldn’t understand what she said, but that felt like some deadly curse. Also the last track, “Supremacy trough the Carnage” starts with great intro, but goes to a total thrash/death carnage.

After listening to a ‘Putrefaction Emphasis’, which, I remind, is a fourth album in a band’s discography, I had an interest to their music. So I visited their last.fm page and surprised by the fact that there are only 205 listeners. It amazed me, because the band’s music, their deliver and painstaking work stand out by high level and quality of playing. On one hand such state of affairs is very unfair. On other hand that’s exactly a beauty and greatness of underground music, when you can find  a real brilliants in some unexpected places.

‘Putrefaction Emphasis’ will be released on November, 24 via Punishment 18 records.