Australian deathcore merchants Thy Art Is Murder have been honing their art for nigh-on thirteen years, releasing four punishing albums and finding their way onto Nuclear Blast in the process. Now back with a blistering new album, human target, the band have reached a pinnacle of precision-driven hatred, dealing out ten tracks in just thirty-eight minutes.
Right from the churning riff that opens the album’s title track, Thy Art is Murder are in one brutal place right now, drawing on the likes of Lamb of God and Suicide Silence to deliver their most blisteringly precise attack to date. Musically flawless, the band execute their deathcore chops with such merciless accuracy that the competition can only look on, jaws agape, as Thy Art is Murder demonstrate their absolute mastery and the fact that the band have managed to cram a few hooks in along the way, is nothing short of remarkable. Offering not a hint of respite, New Gods is built around the sort of towering riffs of which Gojira are rightly proud and the elastic groove the band deploy is hypnotically brilliant. Faster and harder, the aptly-titled Death Squad Anthem comes across like Fear Factory going head-to-head with early Slipknot, the dizzying chorus destined to lodge itself deep within the minds of metalheads everywhere. Picking on an obvious pun, Make America Hate Again is three hate-filled minutes of none-more-brutal deathcore delivered with breath taking panache. The first half of the album is seen out by the lengthy Eternal Suffering, a slow-moving ball of spite that steadily builds pace before adopting a Bolt thrower-esque pose, shattering the opposition under sheer weight of riff. It’s pretty damn stunning, in the literal sense of the word, and it keeps the listener hooked.
It’s back to the short, sharp, shock treatment with Welcome Oblivion, a track that taps into a mechanistic groove before the eerie riff of Atonement emerges from a sea of reverb and triggers a tsunami of unhinged blast beats. Rather more straight forward, Voyeurs Unto Death recalls the might of Aborted, whilst the theme of retribution looms over the trippy, Deftones-y Eye For An Eye, the somnolent beat and slower pace introducing a much-needed touch of light and shade into proceedings before the band finally bark themselves hoarse on the mechanical horror of Chemical Christ, bringing the album to a suitably visceral close.
Eschewing innovation for perfection, Thy Art Is Murder have made no attempt to reinvigorate a formula that has worked so well for them over the course of their career, preferring to strip their sound down to its core and then build it back up, oiling it to a gleaming, unstoppable finish. This is dark, punishing music, captured with pristine clarity and played with unerring precision. Brutal as hell, human target is the most relentless display yet from Thy Art Is Murder. 9
