Hailing from Russia, Atrophied have been around for several years and finally have released their debut album: Pendulum of Extremes.  7 songs in under a half hour, the band wastes little time with intros and gets right into a Suffocation type of blasting with “Relentless Flow”.  The blasting actually reminds me of Suffo’s second album-Breeding the Spawn.

We have Andrey Sergeev on bass, Vitaly Galkin on guitars/vocals and Pavel Popov on drums.  “Relentless Flow” has some nice signature 90’s era pinch harmonics and nice isolated bass guitar at the 1.35 mark.  Nice and well-played audible bass guitar.  The 2 minute mark has a killer groove part that while it’s not quite slam it’s groove-oriented and pretty darn heavy.  “Servitude” has a start and stop opening and then more early Suffocation type of blasting and even sounding a little like Ohio’s Embalmer in certain places, with respect to the blasting style.  Another great groove part, more blasting and then back to the groove.  Very nicely laid out and some decent drum rolls.  Galkin treats us with an ending guitar solo and then it trails off and the song fades out.

“Chains of Perdition” has a nice stomp slam opening and this is the perfect song to play midway during a live show.  Really should get the crowd moving and then 50 second part kicks in and you will be swinging for the fences and some cool drum patterns.  “Initiation” is more of the same but has faster parts and then some cool guitar riffing at the 45 second part before the groove hits and the guitars are heavy and even a bit melodic in nature, I dare say.  The blasting, I feel, should get into true fast blasting territory.  It’s as if the drummer is kind of holding back and not going full throttle with the blast therefore at times it’s more of a fast thrashing beat.

“Edifice of Desperation” gets a kick in the pants with the faster blasting and it’s really early Suffocation, think Breeding of the Spawn, as I mentioned early.  Mike Smith would be smiling.  The vocals are not super guttural, they’re deep and actually understandable which is always a plus.  “Implementation” is more of the same with the thrash type blasting and slow-downs.  and then the band ends with a 9+ minute number entitled “Temple of the Void”.  This is more of an ambient style instrumental.  Cymbals, some other noises going on, synths and it drags on for, as I said, over 9 minutes.  At the end of the day if you take away this ending track it’s really only 17 minutes of death metal-so it’s more like an ep, however it’s listed as a full-length.

Pendulum of Extremes has a nice layout, with lyrics, pics, liners (thanks for the shout out fellas) and the music is nicely produced.  At times the bass guitar plucking mix is almost at the same level as the guitar and the guitar sound needs a little more punch/beefiness to it.   The groove parts are pretty catchy and overall Atrophied, for their first official release, have a good start.  Shore up some of the production and get rid of future ambient 9+ minute instrumentals and that will surely help.  Keep on writing, Atrophied!

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