review by: The Condor

I should say right up front that I have some “issues” with Deathwish Records, the label that released this Cursed One record. I'm sure they weren't doing it to me on purpose, but I had been consistently suckered in the past after picking up any one of their amazingly designed, and VERY METAL looking CDs only to discover the band was in fact not metal, or even heavy, but some boring, rehashed, tepid punk rock cookie cutter hardcore band. Not that it has to be metal to be good, but it does have to be good. So I didn't have high hopes for this one to be quite honest.

But boy, was I pleasantly surprised. Don't know much about the Cursed One, but they are HEAVY, and they are METAL, in a sort of metal core, used-to-be-punk-rock but discovered Slayer and black metal and traded my studded wrist band in for a spiked gauntlet sort of way.

Huge, thick guitars spit out chunky, downtuned riffs with furiously howled vocals, pounding and chaotic drumming, fucked up tempos, drony instrumental breakdowns and all sorts of stops and starts. Noisy and heavy and just weird enough to pull slightly ahead of their metal core brethren. Think some weird mix of Converge, Coalesce, Pantera, and the Melvins, with lots of cool minor key melodies, almost-industrial rhythms, found sound samples, some old school punk rock-ness, and some very heavy metal. (7/10)