Human - Cadaver Academy

Rating:

* * * *

If there was a best metal category at the New Zealand Music Awards - like there is at the Grammys - then Christchurch quartet Human's latest album would be a contender. If not the winner.

Formed way back in 1992, making them one of the longest running local metal bands around,

Cadaver Academy

is the DIY music-makers third album. It's an all-out musical blitz of scything and flailing riffs, double-bass drum carnage, and a four-way vocal attack - or "vokill" attack, as the band would say. Put it this way, they sound like they gargle gorse killer after breakfast.

It's rough round the edges death metal - complete with sludge and dirge - like it's been badly recorded. But as with the clattery, unhinged racket of bands like High On Fire, Nasum, and Napalm Death, that's the point. They get away with it because the intensity of the onslaught is relentless and the decrepit, run-down sound adds a unique quality to the overall album.

And rather fittingly, since it's Maori Language Week, they kick into the final pummelling assault of track nine (TimeOut will spare you the harrowing details of the song title) with the inspired death metal catch cry of "tahi, rua, toru, wha". A world first for metal, surely?

Rough and punishing local music at its best.

Scott Kara