Review: Crisis Benoit – Night of the living deathmatches

A sound that breaks your bones

Crisis Benoit have a short but complicated history. The band started in 2017 as a barebones powerviolence act with 4 members almost as a joke, became a three-piece and finally settled as a duo in 2018. While their first records were identifiable as spazzy, arrogant, minimalist powerviolence, things changed as they begun bringing a more markedly metal feel to the table with their record their “Icon of Violence”. Solidifying this transition is “Night of the living deathmatches”. The first thing I noticed in this album was not just the evolution in terms of sounds but also how the range of the themes they write about has broadened. The record, in 27 minutes, one videoclip and a couple of lines summarizes the duo’s passions for old school putrescent metal, extreme wrestling and horror movies, all tied up in gloomy ambient.

What we can picture here is Lucio Fulci sporting a luchador mask and an Autopsy t-shirt slaughtering Vince McMahon with a neon. Moving from “solely” handling wrestling and the Deathmatch cult to a larger and more horror-filled imagery pool coincides with their new sound which transitions from a minimalist grind/powerviolence combo to a no-prisoners in your face Death/Black metal one. While straightforward and essential their new incarnation has its roots in a variety of bands and styles such as Autopsy, no surprise there, and Brazilian thrash metal mainly while still incorporating North European Black Metal and a lot of late- eighties Californian Death Metal. All of these influences blend together perfectly in an approach that, almost all the time, privileges essential riffing and a violent sound. We can identify plenty of midtempo patterns, arpeggios, tremolo melodies and even some riffs whose influence  can be traced to Eaten Back To Life by Cannibal Corpse in the middle of blast beats. The result is, unlike previous expectations, an album that is both varied but retains a coherent sound. Overall, it is also an original tight record thanks to the very minimalist drum beats which give it a punk edge and to the clean production sound.
To sum up: we really like this new Metal sound, a lot.
Rating: 666
PS: it is worth mentioning that the two covers in the album “Beaking the Law” by Judas Priest, here “Breaking the Bones” and “Caress” by Misfits are a lot more faithful to the original tracks than you might imagine. Honestly, very classy.