Dark Century-Murder Motel

Published: Absolute Underground#58 June/July 2013

DARK CENTURY is a Montreal bands that has been around for the last ten or so years. Lots of contest and small festival appearances and sharing shows with some pretty solid bands. They just released their second album in April called MURDER MOTEL. They have fused a grind and hardcore thing in the past with a humour component about bacon and zombies, which I understand as most people like bacon and zombies. In the words of the band they are "mosh-metal" or "mosh-death metal".
It all starts of with death metal. Straight from the first song they got the growl and the howl from the first minute in. Track#2 gets the guitar chugging going with the fast tapping drums. The term mosh-metal is starting to make sense at this point. I'm not French but I'm pretty sure the song is about bacon. #5 "Ice Breaker" has a nice slow rinding feeling to it and a story about making people into a sausage lunch special I think? "Kill the Crowd" is a pretty catchy track that was released a year or more ago and has a mildly entertaining video on youtube. "Mosh test dummies" is the obvious beer-drinking party song that any bacon loving metal band needs to have. The title track has kind of a cheesy feel to it, and I mean that in the best way. Kind of like a campy horror film filled with gore and a good guitar riff.
Well this is likely the first death metal release I've listened to that had that many food and eating references. But it was mostly in a language I barely understand and about a kind of meat I don't eat so...Anyways it's a good example of low-tech deathy style metal. In a reference to bacon this music is fat and crunchy and if I could work a grease pun in here I would. It feels like the kind of music that would work really well in a sweaty basement party where you drink a lot of someone else's cheap beer.


Michael F. Carnage

http://www.darkcentury.ca/