Zer0

I would admit that crust punk is a genre that I'm not too familiar with bar two or three bands. What I do quite like however is this wonderfully dark and snarling collection of songs by a band who I'm not quite sure are punk or metal. A mixture of both I guess, not that it really matters much. Amebix first came to my attention in a magazine article a few years back where Japanese black metal band Gallhammer were mentioning the albums which inspired them the most. One of the albums mentioned was Arise! and what caught my attention was that album cover. It's unclear what exactly it is but it's most likely depicting men going to fight a war, not very punk looking is it? When I first saw it I presumed that they were some kind of first-wave black metal band with a fixation on ancient warfare but after reading more about the band in more recent years I realised they were something different. However, other black metal bands, including Darkthrone, have cited the band as an influence on their music, so I guess I wasn't too far wrong.

The music itself is dark and menacing, just like the album cover. On first inspection this can sound like badly-played thrash metal with bad vocals. Whereas thrash metal was the result of metal being influenced by the intensity of punk, this album sounds more like punk being influenced by the darkness and heaviness of metal. The best word to sum up this album is apocalyptic. It sounds like it was recorded in some other parallel version of earth where the world is ruled by a totalitarian party and is the product of some secret underground subculture. The streets are hostile and dank, and there are shady people watching your every move.

The band can crank up the anger and intensity when they want to, on 'Fear of God' for example. Also on the fist-pumping 'Slave', which sounds like a rallying call against oppression. The whole album sounds like a rallying call or a call to arms, a call to rise up against the system and destroy it. The music can also be slow and menacing at times such as on 'Drink and Be Merry' and 'The Darkest Hour', which have an almost post-punk feel to them. 'The Darkest Hour' almost has a feel of defeat and damnation to it, stating clearly that “the darkest hour is always before the dawn.”

The production itself is gritty, ugly and dissonant. Perfectly suitable for this album and its contents. Don't expect mind-blowing musicianship on this album by the way, it's certainly not the point of it. Do expect a snarling and gritty ride into an underground world and a paranoid feeling that somebody could kill you at any minute.

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