Review of Zubrowska - Family Vault

Adding to 2005’s ridiculously impressive onslaught of the newly termed ‘deathcore’ (The Red Chord, Despised Icon, Embrace the End, Animosity, The Taste of Blood, Antagony, Between the Buried and Me, Ion Dissonance, etc) come France’s chaos masters, Zubrowska with their vastly improved second effort.

With a better production, a less spastic sound and better songwriting, Zubrowksa have made a respectable entry into the US dominated fray. Rooted in grindcore and math metal, but now with more toned down atonalities, Zubrowska have more shards of rumbling death metal than freaked out chaos-core histrionics, and even with some ill advised singing, the end result is a pretty devastating slab of noise.

Opener “From Hell” sets the tempo of the album with a short salvo jagged tempo, angular grooves and the usual scream/deep bellow vocal mix. “Ode to my Black Sun” offers up an early atmospheric/instrumental segue before bridging into the all out assault of “C.O.V.E.D” and the subsequent controlled chaos of “Manic Rockers From Darkness”, arguably the album’s most discordant spurt. Zubrowska are more impressive when reigning things in a bit, such as “Vampire Killing Kit”, “'Cause I Just Can Love Some Dead Persons” and the rather impressively epic “Through the Sky”. They all deliver more direct lurches and structured dissonance rather than sheer caustic spats of tracks like “Manic Rockers From Darkness”, “Pay to Play” and “What a Wonderful World” (even though the later features a nice acoustic climax).

Production wise, things have improved (Alan Douches’ mastering certainly helps), but Zubrowska could still use a Tue Madsen or Zach Ohren knob job to take their sound to the next level and really polish their delivery. Especially in light of all this year's similarly styled released which feature crushing productions, which in all truth often dresses up simple death metal + breakdowns into something far more devastating. The other area of improvement needed is for screamer Ben to drop the whiny emo vocals (leave that to The Number 12 Looks Like You) or learn to sing cleanly, the deeps growls are impressive though.

Based on tracks like “Through the Sky” and “'Cause I Just Can Love Some Dead Persons” Zubrowska are headed in the right direction and with album number three, could make France a bona fide threat in the genre.

Release Details

Zubrowska

Family Vault

Comments

Related