Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Six String Suicide - "Piss Around the World" (1998)

Full – length album (Iron Palm Produxions/Black Lotus Records, 1998)

Line – up:      Dinos – Vocals/Rythm guitar/bass;
                      Nikos – lead guitar;
                      Panos – drums.

Location:       Athens, Attica /Greece.

Better song of the album:

“D.I.E.”.

Better feature of the album:

The solos.
 Six String Suicide - Piss Around the World
Artwork: Kostas Hantzis

As the Kuntaut Cult, the Six String Suicide belong to that kind of bands that publish a demo and, some years after, the debut album, vanishing already after all these efforts. And as the Kuntaut Cult, also this Greek band was very good, proposing a ferocious metal with strong anarchist lyrics and some curious features able to vary the assault through different ways, despite its incredible rawness.

But, I must specify an important thing: here the music isn’t pure metal. In fact, it is a rough thrashcore with a very obsessive song’s structure, reminding me the British punk/HC. Every song is based often on a sequence of 3 musical solutions that is respected in a rigorous way and repeated at least for twice before and after the possible solo. Sometimes the sequence is very long and structured than the usual, maybe with surprising and excellent passages by the drummer. But the more harder thing comes from the length of some tracks, that reaches often the 4 minutes, while songs like “The Last Trip” reaches only the 2 minutes and a half.

Another feature close to the British punk/HC is the pace of many songs, that are constantly fast and without mercy. But, don’t be afraid, we don’t talking about a band like Cryptic Slaughter or Wehrmacht, so there aren’t blast – beats or ultra – unbridled massacre, since the favourite pattern by the drums is a typical and well digestible thrash tupa – tupa. Despite this, there are even two mid – tempo songs like the aforementioned “The Last Trip” and the following “King of the World”, showing a very contagious groove.

Now, it’s time to talk about the variety of the album. For example: “The Last Trip” contains militant passages close to the more political new metal, while “King of the World” is a groove metal song with Pantera attitude and some dark riffs. The titletrack shows a good and incredibly refined guitarwork, since also the frequent presence of the soloist guitar. There is even an instrumental track, that is “Sick Society”, featuring some mechanical riffs, this is a very inhuman song, also because it has an hard collective approach without solos and similar.

Besides all this, the Six String Suicide often don’t accept the melodies, except the solos, that have an incredible melodic taste and technical skills, while the singer yells thoroughout, helped by a light echo and shouting some great line vocals (especially in “Hate ‘em All” and “D.I.E.”).

But there’s a problem: the sequencial structure is sometimes really exaggerated, an example of this is just “Sick Society” that doesn’t close the album very well, it’s without ideas, despite its consistent length of 5 minutes. Hence, the solos would help to solve these difficult situations but, unfortunately, they aren’t present in all the tracks.
 Six String Suicide - Photo
Photo: Kostas Kolimenos

To sum it up, it’s a shame that this band broke up after this debut album. Okay, it could be better than the final result with some tricks in addition, but it has very interesting features to tickle the curiosity of the listener. Fortunately, it’s possible to listen some songs of the album on YouTube, so, if you are very interested, check them out and enjoy… hoping to find the platter into the stores…

Rating: 69

Flavio “Claustrofobia” Adducci

Tracklist:

1 – Hate ‘em All/ 2 – Dead Boss/ 3 – The Last Trip/ 4 – King of the World/ 5 – Revenge/ 6 – Piss Around the World/ 7 – D.I.E./ 8 – Spirits/ 9 – Sick Society