Verrat – Abgebrannt

Hordes of promising dark hardcore bands sound impressively heavy and technically prowess of their music, but many fail to deliver a fatal blow as they don’t convey enough emotionally-charged heaviness. You know, there should be this special spark of unbridled passion and originality, where the chords aren’t just banged out.

In essence, the six tracks on this Verrat LP bring forth some tried and true metallic riffs, with quite a lot of melody, that fall right between the emotional crust of Tragedy and the Swedish melo-death style of At The Gates / In Flames.

Abgrebrannt is full of gruffer-than-gruff vocals and keeps up a pummelling tempo with brazen, throttling riffs all throughout, and yet they haven’t fully mastered their songwriting craft to deliver that real final blow to make them stand out among scores of other bands in the genre. This whole wall-of-noise and raw aggression I love so much in crust punk music is almost entirely absent here. All that vitality, all that punch-in-the-gut is more or less missing, and the whole record sounds somehow too ‘sterile’ for my taste.

I really don’t like writing negative things about records that are actually not that bad after all, and I’m sure these guys are great people, too. This record just doesn’t click with me the way I was hoping it would. Although, if you’re on the hunt for some melodic, death-metal leaning crust with gruff vocals and dark lyrics in German, Verrat’s Abgrebrannt will most likely meet your requirements.