Helmsplitter: Enraptured by Suffering

Battle jackets, cut offs, or a kutte, are denim or leather jackets adorned with band patches and/or pins, sometimes studs, and are often found at hardcore, punk, heavy or thrash metal concerts. Enraptured by Suffering just screams battle jackets. It feels purely wrong to listen to this album without one – similar to the feeling of ordering a salad at a burger joint. The sound is the baby of Swedish black metal and some groovy thrash and then this baby is now going through a crust phase but since the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, still retains characteristics of its parents. If this sounds enticing, keep reading.

The most important thing to note about this album are the sick fuckin’ riffs throughout. Each song has very standout moments that define themselves with great tempo changes while the bass and guitar come together to define the crunch aspect of the sound. The first 30 seconds to every song are filled with great hooks leaving you wanting more such as “Dance of the Heretic” and “Days of Loathing,” which pull you into their deathtrap and guide you along until your eventual doom. Many of the valuable riffs don’t even seek kvlt status and try to be as bleak as possible but are also groove and thrash-based making for a unique sound that define Helmsplitter as a band worthy of your attention.

   

The problem with Enraptured by Suffering is that the black metal father isn’t so original and is rather redundant. When the blast beats come, the riffs suffer, and the vocalist also doesn’t bring much to the table; pretty plain. He isn’t bad by any means but just really won’t get you excited which leads the entire substance of the album to be purely derived from the instrumental value which, for the most part, is good. As another review pointed out, it sounds like he played it really safe and didn’t explore his capacities. Perhaps he reserved his exploration for the ability to best mimic the sound on the album for live performances so, in a sense, the album isn’t “fake” and overproduced.  In spite of these faults, Enraptured by Suffering is still good and as mentioned earlier, Helmsplitter should be receiving your attention because this is genuinely good music. Hearing these songs live would without a doubt get the entire crowd chugging their PBRs and banging their head. They’re still a young band with about 600 likes on Facebook so hopefully they’ll be on tour soon with some bigger bands so they can get the attention they deserve.

Helmsplitter Official Facebook

Written by Cole Olson

Helmsplitter: Enraptured by Suffering
Horror Pain Gore Death Productions
4 / 5