The brainchild of guitarist/vocalist/everything-ist Andrew Lee, US death metal mob Ripped To Shreds has been tearing up the Californian underground scene since 2016 and shows no sign of slowing down with its third full-length studio release 劇變 (Jubian) (Relapse Records). Originally created as a solo project to increase the visibility of American-born-Chinese in extreme metal, the band now acts as a four-piece and flies that flag with just as much pride as before but to a larger audience.
Meaning “upheaval” Jubian is just that. A gut-punching demolition job on the senses that rarely pauses for breath. Based on The Mukden Incident, a false flag operation staged in 1931 by the Japanese as a pretext for the invasion of Manchuria, bone crunching opener ‘Violent Compulsion for Conquest’ begins with a slow, grinding riff and deep, distinctive guitar tone before launching into a frenzied attack of blastbeats and wet, throaty vocals from Lee.
Another gleefully failed exercise in restraint and subtlety, ‘Split Apart by Five Chariots’ is about Lao Ai, a prodigiously endowed rebel of the Qin Dynasty who was somehow able to pose as a eunuch to win the favour of Queen Dowager Zhao before ultimately going the way of the song title. Brutal but upbeat, the song features a monstrous breakdown and many uses of the word “cock”.
Continuing the saga which began on 2019’s 魔經 – Demon Scriptures EP ten minute epic ‘獨孤九劍 日月神教第三節 (In Solitude – Sun Moon Holy Cult Pt 3)’ never gets dull as it switches effortlessly between a powerful groove and extreme speed, at one point bordering on funeral doom before going up through the gears once more aided by some deftly played melodic guitar solos and more crushing riffs.
Even at just two and a half minutes in length ‘Harmonious Impiety’ still manages to throw out massive grooves, guitar solos and bursts of savage speed while ‘漢奸 Hanjian (Race Traitor)’ sees the band combining bulldozer death metal with passages of melodeath. The bowel-churning frenzy of anti-war cut ‘Reek of Burning Freedom’ leads into the surging, groove-fuelled mayhem of ‘Peregrination to the Unborn Eternal Mother’ before the band take a leaf out of the Nile and Bal-sagoth school of lengthy song titles, concluding the record with forty-nine rip-roaring seconds of ‘Scripture Containing the Supreme Internal Energy Arts That Render the Practitioner Invincible Throughout the Martial Realm’.
Taking Autopsy inspired riffs and vocals, the epic style song structures of Nile, Celtic Frost death grunts, the deranged speed of Wormrot and melodies from the likes of Iron Maiden and Death, Jubian is a thirty-five minute skull-fucking which hints at bigger things to come.
Buy the album here: https://rippedtoshredsdeathmetal.bandcamp.com/album/jubian
8 / 10
GARY ALCOCK