HEAVY has started working with Groover to help promote emerging and new artists, and as such will be publishing single reviews and social media posts on select bands to help promote their music.
Today we listen to This Bile from New Hampshire metal outfit Martial Law.
When a band cites Lamb of God, Sepultura, and Pantera as influences, some strange primeval urge just makes you take notice.
So it is on the back of those three relatively small but spectacularly powerful words that I sit down to listen to Martial Law and their new track, This Bile.
It certainly starts off with an enormous amount of intent, with swirling guitar and breakdown style changes adding an air of expectation and false convention.
You can certainly hear patches of all of the above in this track, but thankfully that fine line that exists between imitation and inspiration is trodden with a deft precision that pays homage to – without replicating – the artists who have inspired this work.
Just past the two-minute mark, vocalist Benson lets out an almighty angst strained bellow while the music around him retreats, opening up an internet pit of malevolence that proves the ethos of less is more.
But Martial Law aren’t done with us yet, as a bass-driven breakdown offers momentary respite from the carnage before building gradually into another round of aggressive contempt that sees Benson purge whatever is left of his demons before the track fades gradually into nothingness…
And what’s best here is this song sounded like Martial Law – well maybe that’s hard for me to judge not knowing their previous work – but what I do know is they didn’t sound like anyone else, which is refreshing in the modern age.
