Fission - Crater

  by Daniel Cressey

published: 18 / 11 / 2004

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Review

Extreme metal here from Fission. Sometimes the traditional horse screaming gives way to some strangely Iron Maiden-esque harmonising. The real plus on 'Crater' is the staccato guitar, which is clinical in its precision. It manages to pull this above standard metal fare. Much of this would be good with more ordinary guitar playing but it wouldn’t be inspiring. But with it the level is raised spectacularly. It means there is something beyond the traditional metal dirge-ing here. God knows what most of the songs are actually about, song titles like ‘The Core-118 Protons of Insanity’ hardly offer many clues. Some of them are a bit overblown with the traditional metal overproduction and distracting additional instrumentals. But there is much to like here. From the aggression of opener ‘Crater’ – after a pointless 40 second orchestrated intro – Fission serves up a killer collection of aggressive noise. Sometimes the album is a little self indulgent and sometimes the singing sits a little oddly with the howling. But in general its a fine addition to the heavy metal catalogue.

Track Listing:-

1 Mechanism
2 Crater
3 Accelerator
4 Empty Nimbus
5 Magnetism
6 Catastrophe Consumer
7 The Core-118 Protons of Insanity
8 Mind Vortex
9 The Chaos Algorithm
10 Eremiten
11 Syndrome