Despite their name, Chicago’s newly formed Ready for Death offer more of a hardcore and thrash style in their debut offering. With 10 tracks and a run time of a little over 20 minutes, their self-titled debut on Translation Loss offers plenty of furious tales about chaos and destruction in a compact package.
The band is made up of musicians with varied metal backgrounds (Pelican, Racetraitor, Indecision, Annihilus, Luggage) that helped Ready for Death develop its raw, crusty DIY feel. The band often sounds like they just came out of one of those dirty house shows where you might have drank too much and lost a couple of teeth in the pit.
As soon as you hit play, Ready For Death comes at you in full force. ‘Vaporized’ is an aptly named track. The song starts of as a sonic assault perfectly blending elements of hardcore and grindcore with drilling guitars and rhythms, and the five-piece continues this trend of hard-hitting straight through the skull pummeling tunes for the first few tracks. ‘Chamber of Disease’ changes the pace with a more death metal feel in both the vocals and huge chugging guitars. The feelings of being trapped in a dark chamber are really felt in this eerie dark track.
‘Cyborg Priest’ is a standout song with some really cool riffs and some awesome sounding layered solos – it’s one of those songs that you find yourself playing over and over because the opening parts to the song are so awesome (or that one annoying friend keeps yammering on when you are trying to introduce them to a rad new band you just discovered…)
‘Microchip Mutilation’ closes things out by slowing the tempo down just a bit and adding in some more groove. This an impressive debut album with plenty hardcore, grind and thrash elements to keep any metalhead happy. If you’re being harsh, perhaps some of the songs are a touch similar and blend together, but this is twenty feral minutes of fun for all the family.
Buy the album here:
7 / 10
ANDREW RISCH