Amebix where a band from the United Kingdom that played a mixture of punk an d thrash metal as well as being one of the first crust punk or stenchcore bands and this is a review of their 1987 album "Monolith" which will be re-issued on June 30th by Dissonance Productions.
Atmospheric soundscapes along with some acoustic guitars start off the album and after a couple of minutes the music starts going into more of a heavier direction and powerful sounding bass guitar leads are also a very huge part of the recording along with the riffs adding in the heaviness of thrash metal.
Vocals have a very aggressive edge that is very close to first wave era black metal while the riffs and drums also mix in the raw energy of punk rock along with the solos and leads also adding in an 80's era metal/punk style and the songs also bring in a great mixture of slow, mid paced and fast parts and clean guitars can also be heard briefly as well as the album progresses along with a brief use of spoken word parts and some of the vocals show an influence from Motorhead. and on later tracks the music also adds in sci fi and avant garde style synths.
On this recording Amebix remained to the crust punk and thrash metal mixture which they where known for while the synths where still considered very original for this genre back in the days, the production sounds very raw and heavy while the lyrics cover society, politics, doomsday, apocalypse, and anti religion themes.
In my opinion Amebix where a very great sounding mixture of crust punk and thrash metal and if you are a fan of those musical genres, you should check out this band. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Monolith" "Time Bomb" "Chain Reaction" and "Coming Home". 8 out of 10.
