December

The Lament Configuration (Earache)
by Martin Popoff

This new signing for Earache is an American band that’s operating at the knife’s edge of extreme metal creativity, having honed their act through seven years of shaping the misshapen shards of brutal metal, releasing three albums and a split before arriving at their new mid-major home. Scooping up the best from hardcore, U.S. death, Swedish death, mathcore, and even industrial, December could’ve met the challenge of modernization and lost, but instead, the obvious riff-mad masters in the band have made sure to build the songs around some of the most crushing yet oddly musical guitar patterns to hit the half-empty clubs. Around this core swirls an incredible array of Dillinger-obscure parts, the backbone of the experience being the insanity of drummer Jason Thomas. On top, the vocals of Mark Moots dominate, recorded quite distorted and industrial, screaming and scraping in the mathcore zone. Reminds me of the excitement upon hearing the God Forbid album, December throttling each one of these songs with an incredibly progressive and intellectualized death sense that thankfully leaves just enough room to breathe.
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