Meet No Consequence. Right now you may not have had the pleasure of hearing their brutal take on death metal but rest assured this band will go far because here, on their debut album ‘In the Shadow of gods’, they ooze confidence and skill.
Opening with the painfully titled ‘ocular gyro crisis’ the band rip through a track that manages to weld melody to brutality without sacrificing any of the heaviness in the way their US counterparts so frequently do. Indeed such is the phenomenal talent of this young band that the closest comparison could be a contemporary Carcass crossed with Arch Enemy with just a hint of Botch, that good. With astonishing solos and jazzy time signatures No Consequence manage to say everything they need to say in this one opening song and there’s still a further ten tracks to go. ‘The arrival of predators’ sees the band’s drummer unleashing hell upon his kit while the guitars are wielded with astonishing dexterity and just when you think you’ve got a handle on everything a melodic vocal appears form nowhere to lend yet further depth to the arrangement. ‘Forged’ has an unspeakably complex opening overlaid with the inhuman growls of dual vocalists Phil and Kaan proving that, when used properly, having two vocalists can open up whole new areas for a band. ‘The fallen’ is an all-out attack on the senses fuelled by bile and the blistering solos that help to raise this album so far above its peers that it leaves them coughing in its wake.
‘Age of fear’ sees the band experimenting further with the type of crazy time signatures popularised by Mesuggah ,while  ‘Synaesthesia’ is an overwhelmingly complex instrumental, with a rhythmic structure that had me reaching for a calculator. ‘Ashes’ is a vicious little number, all throat ripping screams and Dillinger Escape Plan guitars. ‘Longitudes’ is a brief lull in the cataclysmic storm that this band seems to exist in before ‘Latitudes’ delivers the payoff – a melodic beast that lumbers across the landscape offering plenty of sonic surprises along the way. The humorously titled ‘Shallow be thy name’ is a monumentally heavy slice of metal that could bend steel at a hundred yards, veering between doom-slow riffs and crazed interludes that would give the Berzerker a run for his money.
Far too quickly, final track ‘Inevitable silence arrives’ and closes this amazingly promising album. In a mere forty minutes these Reading lads have shown that they have both the talent and intelligence to go far if properly supported and promoted. When a release as invigorating and original as this comes along, it’s hard not to get carried away. This is simply a flawless debut album bursting with enthusiasm and invention and will sate the appetite of even the most hardened metal fan.
‘In the shadow of gods’ is available now. So buy it!
You can currently track down No Consequence’s ‘Pathway EP’ HERE
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