It’s Monday and Mondays suck, so let’s grind it out with the album premiere of Axia’s Pulverizer.
Pulvierizer. Yeah, that’s what this Monday needs, a nice, solid pulverizing. And with what we have in store for you here is some heavy, brutal grind. So, aptly named for both the album and the day. It’s like the stars aligned for once.
Portugal crushers Axia, as a band, are already seasoned veterans of the faster, more brutal metal genres. The band has shared members with Colosso, Holocausto Canibal, The Ominous Circle, and Heavenwood (amongst others). So, it’s really no surprise that once Pulverizer gets cranking, the band get immediately to cracking some skulls.
“Mass Suicide” gives a little spit of noise and the band actually kicks into gear with some death-grinding. It’s the second track, “Fading Into Nothing” that actually takes us into a purer grindcore direction. But don’t let that fool you either. Truth is, there’s enough influence spread out over this record that while it stays rooted in grindcore, it’s more than blast after blast after blast.
Devastating as this record can be, there’s a sinisterness that lurks beneath the surface. It’s not that Axia play to destroy, it’s how they play to destroy. “Normative”, for example, starts out heavy as nails—just brutally slamming its way along. But towards the end they move into a chant that’s both screamed and almost despondently droning. The contrast is a off-putting, even robotic, but it adds to the album’s panache.
At other times, the band just throw us for a loop. “Forward Leads Nowhere” ends on a literally explosive note that seemingly comes out of nowhere. “Means to an End” is an almost gentle track that takes its time to show its teeth, but waits to explode until the following, connected track “As Above So Below.”
In the end, Pulverizer comes just as advertised. It goes grindcore, deathgrind, death metal and gets melodic here and there. But overall, it crushes track after track. At about thirty-two-minutes, Axia blaze through track after track. Fans of Rotten Sound, Lock Up and Nasum should be smashing that play button now. Don’t sleep on this one.
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