Liste der Bands Death Black Hell United Aura Damage

To people that follow Death Metal on a superficial level, not to say on a “mainstream” level, Poland is a well known country for boasting such beasts as Vader, Behemoth and Decapitated. So for these people, the great releases this year of bands like Embrional, Pandemonium and now Hell United might seem like the arrival of newcomers. But you couldn't be less wrong. Hell United, previously known as Eclypse, have been in the game since 1997 and Aura Damage, released this year on Hellthrasher Productions, is already their third album.

But, just like Embrional did it with Absolutely Anti-Human Behaviors, Aura Damage might well be the one thing they needed to embrace larger audience and eventually receive this much deserved recognition. True, HornoKracy, their previous effort, had many qualities but one which wasn’t really there was great production. When you play Brutal Death Metal the way these Poles do, you ought to have crystal clear production or else everything will find itself drown in the mix and sounding too massive but also too generic at the same time. It does take some skills to achieve a perfect wall of technicality and brutality and making it crisp clear for the ears of the listeners. Aura Damage and its engineering at Roslyn studios did it in the best possible way.

Opening the album is the song Red Limitations. Not so sure what they refer to with these limitations but they weren’t meaning limitations in music, because this behemoth is way over the speed limit. This all violent hymn will destroy you from the very first second. No witchy intro, no Z movie sample, it’s pure aggression from start to finish. You will know they mean business and that they don’t intend to go smoothly on you at first and prepare you nicely. In war, the best defense is attack.

Do Hell United only play that Krisiun style of Death Metal where it’s full blasting from the first note to the final note? They do not. Instead, the Poles managed to put out a very well balanced record with the following scheme: one bullet in the knee, one bullet for the other knee, feel the pain a bit. Repeat three times with different parts of the body. Eventually finishing you off with a bullet in the head. This 2 x “brutal” +1 x “breather” iteration makes for the perfect sequence to kill you surely and nicely.

By “breather” I am not implying some kind of a la Necros Christos gate or temple, but tracks that take a little more time than their “bullet” counterparts, building on the atmosphere, exploring dissonance and giving the extra body that the faster tracks couldn’t provide. In case you were wondering to what other bands Hell United could be compared to, I would obviously mention the previously cited Embrional (except that when Hell United go “violent” they do it even more so) or also late Azarath for the combined sense of melody AND brutality.

In the end? In the end, you have one of the finest Death Metal records to have been released in 2012. No more, no less. And not just for Poland, mind you, but in the all goddamn scene. The short, but not too short, duration of Aura Damage, 35 minutes, is perfect and the effect exhilarating. Personally I’ve never given too much credit for bands that just go on blasting their way throughout an album and Hell United understood this so perfectly with providing just the right balance of everything. This record just doesn't fall into one convenient category: it's not overrated NWOSDM, it's not just Brutal Death Metal with no brains, it’s not experimentation for the sake of sounding original. It’s Death Metal and it’s darn good.