Review Days of Anger - Death Path 2011

Some say that they come from a small town in Sweden, and that the town is held in the grip of pop music. All we know is that they are called Days of Anger and hails from the tiny city of Eskilstuna, the sixteenth biggest city in Sweden which makes it quite a small city amongst the only 136 that exist in Sweden. A city where people are held in the grip of pop music, that must be a nightmare, or actually the reality in most of the world. That also requires a band to fight this pop musical oppression, which is the metal way to look at it since metal people always see themselves as free thinking outcast who are misunderstood and different. That is not really true but that subject I leave to a later time but for now this Swedish band i carrying the colours of metal in the war on pop music as some metallic people probably would have said it. I am not quite sure about these things though, I may be wrong which is something that happened before, once.

The name Days of Anger feels quite accurate since it feels like the band is carrying with them lots of anger. Their music is rough, heavy and aggressive and show signs of frustrations kept in check for a very long time, almost like it has been collected in a bucket and then just poured over the musical image which look like a banana skiing down a slope. The production is also geared towards enhancing this particular sound image, a production that is made by the band themselves with mixing from some guy in Västerås, his name can be read to the left of this text. I think that the descriptions of the band in short might be angry, aggressive hardcore thrash metal. Massacre describe them as thrash and influenced by the Bay Area sound, which I don’t really agree with as I think they are very similar to German band Emil Bulls with their aggressive hardcore thrash metal, with one key difference, Emil Bulls are more varied in their sound.

The album starts in a furious pace with a high level of aggressiveness which is not really let up at all, it goes on furiously from start to finish hardly without any breathing space. To be added to this has to be that the record is about 45 minutes long, which in this instance actually feel a tad on the longer side as this intensity of the music can make it a bit monotone towards the end, I think 35 minutes should have been enough. Another thing to to add to the criticism is the fact that the record is not particularly varied, it goes on the aggressive run all the way through, not much in the sense of variety is to be noted here. It is like they have taken all their bottled up frustration and then screams it all out over a period of 45 minutes.

I do think that this album is generally a good album, the music is powerful and good, there is a sense of melody there despite all the aggression that the band show. The band show quite a bit of aggression and anger throughout, maybe it is what happen living in a town oppressed by pop music and now that they have a chance they let it all out.

Songs of this album that are worth mentioning is track number five which is called Stonecold Killer that besides having a grammatically incorrect name is a good and noteworthy song of this album. Another one is track eight which is Spit on Your Grave which besides having a bold title is another one noteworthy track.

In the end though I would say that this album is a rather good one with elements that are very nice and interesting, the problem with it is that it is too long since 45 minutes of quite similar songs that is so intense and aggressive becomes a bit too much, at least for me.

And to end this review I would say that it is not very likely that I will play this album so much more since I know a much better similar band in Emil Bulls.

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Days of Anger Death Path

Days of Anger
Death Path