Extinction Remains - "Smog" (Defense Records/Mythrone Promotion, 2019)

Band: Extinction Remains
Title: Smog
Genre: Crusty Death/Doom Metal
Time: 31.32 min
Release Date: 30th March 2019
Rating: 75/100













Human being dissasociate with rivers, animals, forests and land
Greed is accelerating environmental collapse
The so called progress is killing us and killing land
How tomorrow is going to be?

It will be worse

You can find these joyful words on the booklet of "Smog", a compilation incorporating, in a single CD, all of the releases edited so far by Extinction Remains, a promising Brazilian quartet with strong ecologist and anti-capitalist views. Exactly, in this compilation there are the "Ecologic Noise" debut demo (2013) and the two EPs "Genetics of Defeat" (2016) and "Human Disaster Never Ending" (2017), both self-released. After years with no labels interested in their work, Extinction Remains finally found even two labels to release some months ago this compilation. And I've must say already that Defense Rec and Mythrone Prom did very well to release it because they discovered a very interesting band!


Even though "Smog" is formed by 3 different releases, it sounds quite homogeneous because of a style that knew no very strong changes through the years, but, anyway, the musical evolution of Extinction Remains is clear, as you'll see soon. For the moment, you must know that they plays essentially a gloomy and raw death/doom metal infected by frequent crust punk influences that are really useful to add more intensity to the music. But this formula is sustained by other many good features.

The first one is a nice dynamicity, so the band is able with great fluidity to range from tormenting ultra-slow parts (also with melancholic arpeggios, like in the titletrack) to D-beat passages without forgetting even some more groovy sequences closer to a mid-tempo thrash metal, and you can find all this just starting from the debut demo. Another feature comes from the modest use of the vocals since, in certain songs, they appears after an entire instrumental minute while every release has their own instrumental (in total, the instrumentals are the 3-minute "Under the Dome", "Dunes of Despair" and "The Biggest Garbage Dump"). But sometimes it's a pity that the vocals are so little important because I like them a lot being them very "ignorant" and caveman growls that are well echoed, especially from the first EP "Genetics of Defeat". And the last good feature is surely represented by the ecologist lyrics (they are present in the booklet both in English and in their translation in Portuguese), that aren't so still faced in the extreme metal music...but who better than Brazilian people under the stupid anti-Amazonia regime of Bolsonaro can speaks about the ecological disasters that we are living nowadays?

As I said before, there weren't "very strong changes" in the style of this band but this compilation shows, anyway, a good musical evolution, both in terms of production and music. Speaking about the production, "Ecologic Noise", being a demo, has obviously the rawest kind of production, also because the vocals are unfortunately a bit down in the mix while "Human Disaster Never Ending" has surely the best sounds. And speaking about the music, I realized that "Genetics of Defeat" is the most doomish release, especially thanks to something of the calibre of "Silent Spring", an almost 7-minute song that contains a long doom semi-instrumental section with a very anguishing and desolating mood. Despite its more prominent doomish nature, "Genetics of Defeat" has a final song like "Malnourished" that features also some blast-beats, for the first (and not last) time in Extinction Remains. Instead, the last EP "Human Disaster Never Ending" offers not only a more dynamic approach even due to a more complex drumwork but also a guitar solo (the first and last in this compilation) in the song "Toxic Sludge".

So, as you can see, we are in presence of a band that add always something new in their music, even though they plays anyway in a raw style, proposing a combination between Bolt Thrower, the Swedish death metal à la Nihilist/Entombed and Atrament. And I think that you can find the best efforts of Extinction Remains in their more doomish, more complete and also longest EP, that's "Genetics of Defeat", lasting almost 15 minutes of lenght. At this point, I believe that Extinction Remains promises plenty of good things in the future times, and some of these "good things" are going to arrive soon through their upcoming split with the Brazilian hardcore punk Màcula, that will be released in a co-operation between Defense Records and Last World Records, a label recently known on these pages thanks to Split/Cross. How many good news for Extinction Remains...but is it the same for Planet Earth?

Tracklist:

1 - Infested
2 - Under the Dome
3 - Sick Planet
4 - Smog
5 - Dunes of Despair
6 - Silent Spring
7 - Malnourished
8 - The Biggest Garbage Dump
9 - Toxic Sludge
10 - Cancer
11 - Vengeance

Line-up:

Arthur - vocals/bass
Artur - guitars
Caio - guitars
Mateus - drums

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/extinctionremains/timeline?ref=page_internal
Defense Records: http://www.defensemerch.com/ 
Mythrone Promotion: https://www.facebook.com/mythroneprom