City Of Death is the third album from Polish noise makers Steamachine. Having dabbled in a few metal styles over their career, City Of Death has a heavy carnival influence to it which I have to say I really like. It's interesting just how much more sinister things sound when you pump eerie, jingly circus sounds amongst very dark, heavy, trash metal.
Vocalist/guitarist Krystian 'Juras' Jurkiewicz makes some fantastic screams, grunts and generally unnerving noises as well as spitting out lyrics with venom (in English) with style. Their sound is big and busy for a four piece and each track has something different about it whilst in keeping with the carnival theme throughout the album. City Of Death consists of seven songs but with most of the tracks being over four minutes long it doesn't need to be any longer. Steamachine, would seem to fall under a few sub-genre banners such as groove, thrash, deathcore and nu metal. I'm pretty selective when it comes to nu metal as I am not fully on board with most of it however, Steamachine manage to blend this element with a mixture of other styles so the nu metal is not so in your face.
City Of Death is a predominantly lively listen with only a few lighter intervals and it is all encased in a great dark, groove which is really effective. As the tracks are all so different and flow so well into each other I found it difficult at first to find a stand out track. After a few listens though tracks like "Show Of Death", "Monsterland", "Acrobats Of The Abyss" and "Toys Factory" are real monsters! I also really enjoyed the theatrics of the opening and title track "City Of Death". The album is a great showcase of Steamachines talent as musicians. The artwork is a visually an appropriate connection to the theme and the accompanying video for the song "City Of Death" brings a hint of carnival chaos but is a bit disjointed in its visual FX. I am assuming this was done on a budget though so fair play to them for the effort.
Overall, I would say that Steamachine have nailed it with this release. Its pretty brutal and super entertaining so I find very little to argue with here. Who knows if this is the style Steamachine have now settled on but I kind of hope so as I think there could easily be a continuation based on the material on City Of Death.
City Of Death is available digitally on Spotify, Apple and Bandcamp. CD copies can be attained via Bandcamp.
