Narakah – Blast Haven (Recommendation)

During one of my tag searches on Bandcamp, the band Narakah from Pittsburgh caught my attention thanks to their striking artwork. They released a new EP, Blast Haven, just about a week ago. As the name of the record already suggests, there is a lot of blastbeats and bitter Grindcore to pick up in the songs. If you like merciless high-speed terror that goes in the direction of Pig Destroyer or Nasum, this is exactly the right place for you and you will enjoy the EP to the fullest.

A short sample intro and Narakah already throw their first crusher at you. These slightly atmospheric interlude-like openings turn out to be a common recipe in the course of the record to make the following brawl seem even harder. The tracks are filled with ultra-fast blast beats, where especially the snare and a lot of strong riffs are extremely convincing. The guitar playing on Blast Haven offers some furious HM2 riffing and always lets slightly dissonant elements flow in, which in combination with the samples can unfold a dense, dystopian setting. With the rabidly roaring vocals I immediately had to think of Pig Destroyer – by the way, a comparison that also fits well with the rest of the sound. The songwriting is therefore dedicated to classic Grindcore and offers – in addition to a lot of extremely fast parts – especially heavy-braking interludes that end in breaks and tight mosh parts in constant change to fulminant D-beat . On the short tracks, as usual for this genre, the instrumens can impress throughout, causing a furor in every tempo shown. In addition, the sound for a record of this genre offers a really excellent production and tickles with its strong quality, all the aggression out of Narakah and their music, which passes easily to the listener.

So far you can get the EP from the band on tape or CD format. A vinyl version, possibly in combination with the first output of the band, could follow soon according to their own bandcamp page. The gorgeous artwork here is very eye-catching and at this point it has the same quality as the music itself.

Blast Haven is really fun over a short distance, but then it is also a bit monotonous in the long run, because it primarily comes up with songs that mostly have the same structure and therefore “only” consists of crunchy rage speeches without any frills. Thanks to an almost never-ending blastbeatinferno and creative as well as distinctive guitar playing, Narakah nevertheless do not sound like any other random Grindcore band. Instead, at various points on this EP, their influences are reminiscent of various celebrated representatives of the American millennium Grind era. Definitely a band to watch as Grindcore Fan!

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