Direblaze is a Melbourne based band formed in 2011. Drawn together by a mutual love of Thrash and Death metal, drummer Noriyuki Imai and guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Rose formed a Slayer tribute band with Nick Tobolov on guitar and Dave Poulter on the base. Evolving out of this, Direblaze put pen to paper and began to write their own music, influenced by traditional Thrash and early Death metal, citing early Sepultura, Megadeth and Slayer. Their debut album, Direblaze is the outcome of years of hard work and regular gigging.
Can you slot Direblaze into a slot of 1980s/90s Thrash and Death metal? Sure you could. Does the album reflect the influences of their favourite artists? Well sure – you’ve got harmonic backing centred around tritone movement, flurries of ornamentation and crushing downbeat-centred riffs, paralleled melodic movement of guitars over an Imai’s dualistically pulsed drumming, songs centring around contrasting rhythmic intensity: classic Slayer. You’ve got those bluesy runs, jilted sense of groove and metre: classic Megadeth.
But were you to reduce Direblaze to such musical interrelations you’d miss out on what makes this band particularly interesting.
The album opens with Abyss. A wind over a blackened field, the rumble of barely-contained force ever-present. In the distance, a rhythmic, metallic hammering over crackling radio static. The rumbles, snores and sighs of the immense and destructive industrial machine as it sleeps and consumes. It slumbers onwards, there is an intake of smoke-laden air, a suspension, a pause, and then the beast erupts skyward, its enraged cry the Nights of Blackest Darkness.
Nights of Darkest Blackness presents us with high stabs and unexpected modal inflections combined with shifting rhythmic displacement which constantly threatens to undermine the stability of the pedals. Highlighted by the constant shifting between high melodic assertions, answered by low-end growls and snarls, it speaks of an aggressive, violent need to break, destroy and undermine structures, to bring down and collapse. The piece bubbles develop and shift, coalescing into the solo riff, where all elements of the piece are brought together, before, through an extended figure we are brought back to the now-familiar (but no less dangerous) initial idea and vocal section. A good opener, it displays a sophistication of construction one wouldn’t necessarily anticipate, or catch upon first listening.
My personal favourites of the album were The Sense in Violence and Bane and Reverence. The former a rollicking, rolling, highly rhythmical but ever-moving romp – it has a really catchy riff, that great ominous guitar melody in the opening and unrelenting vocals on the part of Jimmy Rose, who pushes through the verses rapidly but contrasts perfectly with longer, drawn-out bellows displaying quite a breadth of considered approaches. The development and mix of the riffs is great – there is enough distinction in the parts to make riffs interesting and allow for a breadth of experience across the piece, but enough development of ideas to demonstrate their capacity for reinvention and gradual change.
Bane and Reverence shows an entirely different side of Direblaze, displaying their breadth of style. Slower, more introspective, the instrumental journeys through a slower style, giving the perfect platform for soloists to display their well-developed chops. The piece moves through a compound section of juicy chords in a march-like figure: like immense turning cogs, turning ever more, growing ever larger through the removal of the more ethereal elements and concentration on the chugging guitars, ever ready for some emotionally charged melodic turns before the carpet is pulled out from underneath us. The singular rhythm guitar is left and it alone asserts and decries is existence, rallying together the band underneath its groove. The lead takes over with harmonised melodies, reinvigorated and propels us onwards, slower melody leads to fast turns leads to a blown-out solo as the guitar grows towards some finality, referencing the melodies earlier. Back comes the rhythm line, a brief reduction in texture, but favouring the melodic side of the music. Chords underlie the figure before finally, a chordal cadence takes us out, breakdown and the beast sleeps once more. Fantastic track: to me it speaks of the approach, forced adjustment of the quietly introspective and private toward some enforced outward-looking, public structure, some machine that requires hegemony, the heroic struggle of the individual to reassert themselves, the expression taking on more and more vigour, gaining more and more support. A narrative of revolution against hegemonic forces.
The guitar work on the album is quietly capable. I never get the sense of difficulty for the sake of difficulty, nor do I get the sense that Rose and Tobolov hold back their abilities at any point. If you want to hear them at their fore, listen to the solos, but also listen closely to the back ends of the riffs, to the musicality with which riffs are brought to a close and turned back into the start of the next. There is a load of skilful playing in these sections and that syncopation is taken on with no issues. There is a real sense with Rose and Tobolov that they have the chops and musicality to put together really interesting music, but what’s more important is that they have the drive to take on more complex rhythmic constructions and are technically engaging riffs. These were the standout features for me.
The album is in some sense constantly flirtatious: at points when classic Slayer or Megadeth tropes seem imminent, Direblaze surprises with a brief diversion: a syncopated back end to a riff which will strike the listener out of metric single-mindedness, a riff tail which will flourish a melodic wail amidst a heavily rhythmic section, a shift from a straight four into the unknown metric territory. And then it is whisked away, the music innocuously continuing as you would have thought, though now a glimmer of trickery in its eye.
Overall the album displays an admiral effort to never let anything become boring. The guitar riffs are jam-packed full of ideas, brimming with energy and never giving in to tedium.
The temptation to sit back on one’s laurels after writing a kick-ass riff is never entertained, and “Direblaze” reflects a group of musicians who do not compromise with their music and constantly work to make it interesting and developing. For those of you looking for an album that seeks to explore where the 80s and 90s Thrash and Death metal could have gone, for a developed sense of style and drive to make their music interesting and multifaceted, look no further than this!
Release Year: 2015
Label: self-released
Category: Album
Country: Australia
Reviewed by Duncan Therkildsen Jones
