Album Review: Atoll - Prepuce
Reviewed by Daniel Phipps
Having spent eight years as a band which has resulted in three full length releases and live performances at some of the most notable brutal death metal events in North America, Atoll have seen this hard work pay off after signing with powerhouse label Unique Leader. The first task is the release of their new record Prepuce and take further steps forward to becoming a household name within the genre.
With the release of Prepuce, Atoll provides you with six annihilating tracks of hearty slamming brutality. The Phoenix band do not hold anything back on Prepuce, with each track just giving you a good old fashioned bludgeoning from start to finish. At the centre of each of the offerings is an extremely potent and straight up in your face guitar sound which is like a punch right in the balls. Along with its grotesque slams, Atoll builds and crafts each track to give you more than just a mindless collection of slam riffs and they accomplish this by including a series of intense grinding sections and catchy hooks which include just a tad of melody which they sneak under your nose.
All this together and each track on Prepuce is an utter onslaught of American brutality, giving you that primitive brutal style in places and a bit more depth to help it stand out. The drums are placed extremely effectively in the mix allowing you to differentiate the kicks, snare, toms etc easily and adding that layer to give the riffs and the monstrous vocals that pop.
Prepuce won’t win awards for its originality however with a style of death metal that can be like watching paint dry at times, Atoll brings a very solid collection of songs. Along with its pummelling brutality you do also get some light hearted samples which, granted, are slightly juvenile in nature, however there is nothing juvenile about the execution of this release. It’s heavy, vicious and has a really good overall flow and very much worth giving your attention.
