Kataplexia
Supreme Authority
6.1
I ran across the last album from Kataplexia back when it came out in 2005, and I was once asked to describe the band and all I could come up with was a somewhat emphatic, "Yeah, they're okay." With Supreme Authority, the band is improving upon the earlier Catastrophic Scenes, but I’d still be hard-pressed to call them anything more than “good.” Their brand of brutal death is heavily indebted to the US scenes, both Florida and New York, with a mix of Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Cannibal Corpse along with the more modern brutality of Deeds Of Flesh and Disgorge. It’s adequately executed and at times, highly enjoyable, but to say that it’s anything more than exceptionally competent would be as much an overstatement as saying that it sucks would be short-changing it.
Kataplexia hails from Finland, although every member is actually South or Latin American (save the session drummers who fill in for vocalist/drummer Rodrigo "Fatality" Artiga on recordings). Fatality’s vocals are deep chesty growls and grunts, often double-tracked, and despite the monotony that creeps in over the course of the record’s thirty-four minutes, they’re still one of the band’s stronger points. The riffs are appropriately squealing and thrashing, with some Suffocation-styled breakdowns for good measure, but not enough to warrant the “core” suffix. (The breakdown riff at around 1:05 in “Sight Of The Anonymous Identities,” with its cyclical riff, is pretty damn tight, I gotta say.) My personal favorite track, and one of the few moments that truly stood out, is the choppy twisting riff in “Circle Of Sickness.” On the downside, the snare sound is hollow (why do people mix drums this way?), although the hi-hat cymbal sounds pretty cool, splashy and real without being a wash.
Not unlike the Limb From Limb record I reviewed awhile back, Supreme Authority is a solid, tight brutal death metal record, in the same rotting vein as a thousand others, and with that in mind, I can’t recommend that you rush right out and buy it, even if it’s still pretty good. If Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse are such favorites that you need a blend of them, or if you simply cannot get enough of bands like Disgorge (US) or Prostitute Disfigurement, then by all means check out Kataplexia, as they’re close enough to satisfy your tastes and good enough to entertain you without pushing the boundaries at all.
