Album Review: Five Days Of Rain – Taste My Breath After The Fallout

The dark, starkly industrial “Intro” soundscape combined with the maniacally skidding entry, colossal breakdown and elongated scouring howl that adorn “Feeding My Own Entropy” supply you with everything you need to know about Five Days Of Rain’s credentials. Their biography – formed in Italy 2004, EP recorded 2006, change of line-up 2007/8, signed to Rising Records 2009 – neatly wraps up the facts, but it’s their music that is the most revealing.

Taste My Breath After The Fallout is a hefty slab of sonic obliteration that owes a great debt to the vagaries of modern American deathcore but also clings onto the speeding coat-tails of early Swedish death metal. Easily identifiable are the crushing half-time vortex breaks and double-kick battery that bands like Black Dahlia Murder and Suicide Silence delight in, the furious palm-muted riffing and harsh, throat-scraping vocal style pedalled by Whitechapel and Job For A Cowboy, and screwing it all into place are the incessant galloping rhythms and buzzsaw guitar characterized by bands like At The Gates and Entombed.

The polyrhythmic assault and buffeting verbal squall that power “Searching Within Their Memories” and the jagged shreds, riff sweeps and power chord harmonies that litter the otherwise spacious “Corneal Ulceration” show off both the band’s impressive technical ability and their wild, imaginative songwriting ability. They’ve found a distinctive, addictive style and they seem reluctant to give up such a position of power, nailing each song to their snot-slicked flagpole, proudly repeating their own colors over and over again.

Certainly, one downside to the pinpoint accuracy of the drums is the naff metallic click on the kick drum – it sounds like a particularly indignant conductor tapping on his lectern. At times, it’s so incessant it becomes mildly hypnotic but that sensation soon develops into a nagging annoyance. But when you’ve got a monumental, balance-shifting sub boom that explodes into each beatdown and spine-tingling layers of crash and ride on tracks like “As An Ocean Rebuilt The Life” to contend with, it’s easy to forgive such small inaccuracies.

We’ve had to wait a while for it, the release date having been pushed back due to “a series of misunderstandings, delays and mistakes”, but it’s been a debut album worth waiting for. An extra layer of recording polish, a more generous running time and just a little more variety and Five Days Of Rain will seriously have something to shout about.

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