Album Of The Week : Soilent Green - Confrontation

Soilent Green, the legendary head bludgeoners from Louisiana, released their forth album in 2005, Confrontation. Famed for their unorthodox approach to metal, adding jazz and blues into their frenetic deathgrind mix, even if they're not everyone's cup of tea you can't deny their sheer originality and audacity

Confrontation, like it's predecessors, is the aural equivalent of having a binbag put over your head and dosed with copious amounts of LSD before being thrown into the lion's den. The third track, "A Scream Trapped Underwater", being a perfect example. It opens with an off-kilter groove riff before morphing into some classic death metal and blastbeats, with vocalist Ben Falgoust screaming "Blood on my hands, Blood on my hands" in a satisfyingly er, brutal fashion. Then you have the mind-boggling middle section, a classic blues lick fed through guitarist Brian Patton's tech-orientated mind, there's no way you can headbang to this, one has to just sit back and let the weirdness flow over you.

This is undoubtedly the highlight of the album, but the first real song, "Leaves Of Three" is a good track too, in fact there are quite a few other decent numbers found across the record. In between the more savage metal assaults are short intro tracks which wouldn't be out of place on a country record. Even if this is nice respite from the intensity of the rest of the record, they feel a touch contrived, unlike the small preludes to tracks on Sewn Mouth Secrets, which for me fit perfectly and enhance the song greatly.

This serves as a good introduction to the rest of Soilent's stuff, if you are struggling after the first few songs on this record you might as well give up. Definitely worth checking out if you enjoy the wacky nature of The Dillinger Escape Plan and southern metal.

7/10

Highlights : "Leaves of Three", "A Scream Trapped Underwater"

See also - Goatwhore, Eyehategod, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Pantera.