Coldworker: The Contaminated Void

First of all, some background that I learned on the Intertubes: There once was a band named Nasum, whose singer died in The Tsunami, and whose drummer is now in Coldworker. I’ve never even heard of Nasum, much less heard anything by them… so go blow your comparisons outta’ your ass, m’kay?

By the way, “Nasum it” is an anagram for “tsunami”… coincidence? I think not!

Moving on.

This album (released in November 2006, but in this year’s heaping pile of metal) is what I’d call a fucking massacre of melodic death metal. But it’s not just death metal. There are a lot of thrash influences in there, too. In my opinion, that’s a recipe for yummy, bitches!

Coldworker wastes no time. They hit you hard and fast, fuck you up, and then… out. Blam. Done. Fourteen songs in forty minutes. You do the math. There’s no dawdling here, kids… only some of the heaviest shit you’ve heard since drunk Santa gave you a Cleveland Steamer in the mall bathroom at Christmas.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s a metric shit-ton of diversity on the album song-to-song, but the same could be said for Goatwhore–my previous death metal review. Where Goatwhore earned high points (the mighty ocho) for being more throwback “classic” death metal, Coldworker melds the most attractive aspects of root death metal with katy-bar-the-door riffs, blastbeats, and a solid nod to keeping tempo, instead of just playing as hard and fast as possible.

The Contaminated Void is definitely better than Goatwhore’s A Haunting Curse, but not a full point better. It’s hard to get the crushing nine here on the Fury.