This one popped into our mailbox last week and was released on Friday. Apologies to the band for missing their Bandcamp Friday drop, especially as the Bandcamp version is the one you want. Spotify and other sources made them remove all the samples from their songs. Boo!
Betrayers come from “down south” around Bristol and the Forest of Dean, coincidentally where my folks lived for a few years. Given the lovely scenery and laid back lify down there, you’d expect some bouncy pop punk, but no. This is a bunch of miserable noise merchants who are throwing out filthy, doomy noise akin to Napalm Death after they’ve had a really bad week. Angry, shouty metal of the most visceral type.
Seven tracks on are display here and they vary greatly in length from barely over a minute to over five, and a lot of experimentation is obviously taking place. Betrayers aren’t a band with a formula, they’re a bunch of mad scientists chucking ingredients in and seeing what causes the mode aural damage. “Cut The Head Off The Snake” opens with what sounds like a fake phone call (memories of Exodus’ “Feeding Time At The Zoo”) and into some brutal death sounds. Thrumming bass tones, harsh vocals you can’t understand… the kind of stuff that goes down very well when you’re pissed off. Music to punch bags to.
“Knives in a Line” starts off in a flurry, but slows a bit in places giving a good mix of the extremes of Betrayers’ repertoire. The fast, screamy bits blend well with the slower, doomier sections. I’m not sure if there are two vocalists or if one person is covering both the high and low ends, in which case I’m somewhat more impressed as those two opposites often his rapidly one after the other.
“Angela Landsbury vs Nicholas Cage” is the remaining short track and it’s as mental as the name suggests. However, the true test is with the longer numbers. It’s comparitively easy to chuck out some short songs and keep people happy as they don’t notice any repetition; the novelty lasts longer. Ask Lawnmowwer Deth, they’re the first band I can recall reall listening to who mastered amusing short songs with quality long ones (but don’t tell them I complimented them as it’s very much out of character for me).
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Across “Bring Me In From The Sunlight”, “Darkside of the Mountain”, “Alters” and the comparitively epic “Laura Grey” Betrayers don’t do a bad job. “Sunlight” has an element of spoken word, which is quite creepy. “Darkside” is an impressive slab of abrasive metal with a wonnderfully slow ending perfect for extreme headbanging and for the bassist to pose with his bollocks actually touching the stage. It’s that heavy and downtuned, possibly all the way to the key of H. Psychostick fans rejoice.
It would be easy to say that “Alters” is more of the same… but it isn’t. There’s almost a melodic undertone from the guitars drifting throughout, to the point that it’s the closest to a mainstream metal song on here. Not exactly Maiden or Priest, more Behemoth, but borderline catchy. “Laura Grey” is almost six minutes of heartfelt balladic crying with the surprise addition of piano and acoustic guitars as the singer regales us about a woman he’s loved since school and actually ends in a marriage proposal.
OK, that’s bullshit. It’s actually a four minute scary metal song with two minutes of creepy keyboards tagged on the end. But I had you going, didn’t I?
The mp3s the band sent were only 128kbps which essentially means “low quality”. CDs are usually 160, and many audiophiles won’t touch them under 198. But for the rough, harsh music presented here this worked. It’s lo-fi. It’s noise. It’s thrashy garage metal and it’s meant to be rough round the edges. And if you want to sample it, you just have to scroll down a little bit and hit play. Just lock away all the sharp knives first.
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Weapons For Killing Cattle is out now
Header image by Duncan Everson
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