Album Review: Colossvs - 'Unholy'

31 October 2014 | 12:28 pm | Staff Writer
Originally Appeared In

Polished and enjoyable, it's a familiar dish that you probably won't mind.

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It seems like metal bands these days are just trying to outdo each other in the game of being, well, evil. They all wear the same ominous black plain clothing and have the same dirty long hair. Hell, they probably all smoke the same blunt, which is unhygienic and would explain the bad complexion. If you were to pick one band to be atop them all though, it would be The Black Dahlia Murder; coming in close second however, would be Melbourne’s Colossvs.

The band’s fiery new album, ‘Unholy’ is one monster of a metal album. You may think with a name similar to synth-rock group PVRIS (replacing vowels with “V” is all the rage these days) and an artwork as ambiguous as it is beautiful, that Colossvs is some post-rock/ambient-spirit-experimental band. You’d be dead wrong and stupid, because song names like ‘Christburner’ and ‘Per Lucem Profanus’ would suggest they are far from experimental.

The only issue here is that 'Unholy' is nothing new. It’s kind of just another metal album. Sure it’s heavy and powerful and the lyrics hint at a need for an exorcism (“I am the darkness!”) but that is really it's main drawcard. However, in saying all that, we give credit where credit is due and by the looks of things, credit is due here.

Tracks like ‘Crown of Thorns' and ‘Christburner’ are very well polished and the instrumentation and heaviness works well with the song, not against it. Too often a band’s love for distortion and overdrive pedals can muddy everything but here everything feels…separate? You can take each instrument (including the hella-sick vocals) in and feel its power without being boggled down by some open-string chugga chugga.

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We like to jest about The Chug but we’d be foolish to not mention the well done solos this band springs forth. ‘Christburner’ has one with forty seconds and if you don’t like that well then we go back to the previous statement of you being wrong and stupid. Not trying to alienate any of the readers out there, the solos are just goddamn wicked and well worth defending.

Although this album will be like every pub in Australia and give you same warm beer and Parma you’ve had for half your existence, it still has the same redeeming qualities. It’s familiar, safe and enjoyable. It still manages to burst with flavour and prowess when it begins to dwindle, keeping you coming back for a little bit more. The one thing ‘Unholy’ has above the Parma is it doesn’t put the fucking chips underneath the chicken and make them soggy; or in music terms: it gives you everything it has on the surface and sometimes it’s nice to just sit back, blast some simple metal and sacrifice a goat or two.

1. Cathedral

2. Christburner

3. Crown Of Thorns

4. Heosphoros

5. Xeper

6. Per Lucem Profanus

7. Enthroned

8. Exile

9. Unholy I- Benay Elohim

10. Unholy II- Pesha

11. Unholy III- Eschaton