Condemnation

Before you start wondering, no, this here isn’t the latest musical regiment representing the Palestinian People’s Front or even the People’s Front of Palestine. The Jasser Arafats is a Finnish band, formed in 2007 and now coming out with their debut album in fairly impressive fashion. I can only make uneducated guesses that the band's name is rooted in the peculiar and possibly inebriated. Bare in mind as well though that the song material itself does not veer towards the humorous or comedic in any way.

You want neck-breaking speed, slaying riffs aplenty, airtight playing from the band throughout, melodic moments in modesty, solos being thrown out occasionally and modestly in favour of even more riffs? The more you tilted towards the affirmative on these accounts, the more likely you are to adore this disc. Cuts like the title track, Checkmate and Axis Reborn show a psychotic lack of remorse to the listener’s endurance with their devotedly trashing assault. Singer J. Kurki’s consistently guttural roar takes the mood firmly into death metallic territories and the band’s feet are even more steadily planted on death metallic grounds with the numerous, let’s say, Six Feet Underish groove parts as found on tracks like Empty Horizon and Gun=Life.

Whereas the relentless pounding is something that these guys seem to excel at, the slight moments of variation don’t do quite as well. The clean guitars in the middle of Ritual of Justice just feel clumsy and out of place and the clean guitars that open Alone seem…weird, recalling System Of A Down of all bands before going into a much more standard death metal grind. Speaking of grinding, that is the first adjective I get when thinking about the production, especially the guitar sounds. This is some commendably heavy stuff – absolutely brutal in the guitar department. At times it can even leave the fastest riffs a bit muddy, but doesn’t hamper the energy too much. Thankfully the other instruments keep up in the mix so that the balance doesn’t suffer too much.

Overall, Condemnation shows a band with fierce abilities in their best areas and the ambition to broaden their output beyond said areas. While not a masterpiece or overtly original, this album proves that The Jasser Arafats is a serious prospect for fans of death and trash metal. With ammunition like this on their debut, the clichéd sky seems to be the limit.