California’s Rude, put out a pretty killer debut 3 years ago, Soul Recall.  The follow-up, again on F.D.A. Records, Remnants… continues along the same path.  Rude play a death metal style rooted in early 90’s death metal, rooted in the Floridian Morrisound Recording style.  So think of the sounds of Brutality, Pestilence, Death, Disincarnate and toss in a good amount of blast beats.

“Torrent to the Past” is a killer opener with loads of blast beats and an amazing guitar sound.  “House of Dust” is a slow starter with an infectious groove, before the song gallops into a classic pace and the rhythm section at the 1.35 mid-paced rumbling part is a thing of brutal beauty.  Yusef Wallace has such a great death metal voice, coming across, once again sounding like the brother of Martin Van Drunen.  The title track gets into a cool opening with some nice drum fills.  At the 40 second part the blast comes in and punishes you, before the song gets entrenched in a mid-paced bouncy part with some cool guitar parts and a real loud guitar solo gets mixed in.  It comes soaring in like an airplane and is rather unnerving at how loud it comes in.  This would be the perfect part to crank up, have your car windows down when you’re stopped at a stop light.  Complete obnoxiousness.  The blast comes in again towards the end, when it comes in seems to be not too tight at first, but eventually rights itself, especially since it knew I was reviewing the album.

“Children of Atom” closes the album with a whimper and not a bang.  Again a nice rhythm section, semi-melodic, opening the track and we also get another one of those loud mixed in space solos, again it’s kind of cool, but also loud as shit.  But the song, overall is a bit boring.  The tune slows down even further and the song is just kind of blah, which sucks because prior to the song there is a short instrumental that is pretty boring and seems to be filler.  The album has all this intensity and killer riffs and especially the tune “Sanctuary”, but I’m perplexed as to Rude’s decision to end with these last 2 very vanilla and bland tracks?

Remnants…> is a solid death metal album, but it’s uneven at times, as I mentioned above.  The production, overall is pretty good.  The snare drum needs some more bass to it, as it sounds rather like paper, at times, just not a deep resonating snare.  The guitars are well done, a tad thin, with the production, but overall nicely done, same with the bass guitar and vocals.  Those above mentioned jolting solos/sounds mixed in so loud is strange at times. 

Wound’s Engrained debacle.  The classic Seagrave album cover is awesome and the booklet is well designed.  The limited edition cd comes in a digipak and it’s all nicely laid out.  Well done, Rude, this is a fun death metal album to listen to and a nice trek back in time, to the 90’s death metal scene.

[Visit the band's website]

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