FDRADIO

Abraxis, Australia's one-man holy terror hardcore enthusiast, has finally released this impressive self-titled full-length debut on Frequency Deleted Records, offering up a concise eight tracks/half-hour of extremely effective Integrity/Ringworm worship – right down to the dead-on cover of the former's classic "Abraxas Annihilation". If you missed out on the band's demo, expect loads of sneering, Human Furnace-like vocals over churning Clevo-styled power chords and fiery lead breaks. And he's still spicing things up with experimental noise/"apocalyptic folk" excursions as well, most notably in "I Hope to Die", where deep, restrained singing hovers amidst reverberated acoustic guitars and distant swells of feedback or crispy, distorted hums. Obvious advancements have been made in terms of the production values, and while a little room for improvement may remain, this material sounds very good, especially considering that most everything's handled by one dude (I believe a session drummer helped him out). Overall this is a killer album that has me really looking forward to hearing more from Abraxis. Sure, it's not the most original thing on the planet, but there are little bits and pieces that stray from the formula. And when a band's chief inspiration is one of the greatest hardcore bands of all time (Integrity), I can certainly live with strong similarities in approach – especially when it's executed at this level of quality. The hardcore oriented songs are powerful and to the point, the more experimental material is aptly chilling and possesses true feeling, etc. Great work. I'm all over this.