The Awakening is the third offering from back-from-the-dead thrashers Send More Paramedics. Coming as a two CD set, the first disk is the same onslaught of thrash-punk that we've come to expect from our anthropophagic friends. The second disk, however, becomes the moody, brooding soundtrack to the coming zombie apocalypse of 2025.
Send More Paramedics patented sound, zombiecore, is hard to write about because it always leaves the opinion that it sounds generic. Plenty of bands mix up thrash metal and hardcore, but no one does it quite so well as Send More Paramedics. If you already know their assault of thrash metal and hardcore, then you know how fucking cool the whole thing is. If not, be prepared to have the fuck eaten out of your fucking face. Played at speeds and with a proficiency that doesn't befit the fact that they are, after all, mindless monsters hell-bent on propping up their decomposing cadavers with fresh neuron juice, it is the manic, spastic nature of their guitar blasts and drum beats that define the sound of zombiecore.
Just as The Hallowed and the Heathen added a more punk edge to the zombiecore archetype, hints of heavy metal occasionally filter through the lead lines of The Awakening. Lacking a true shout-along like "Zombie Crew," the album is none the weaker than its predecessor. Built of blistering thrash, hardcore, punk and metal, it delivers a full cranial blow out and is still just about the fucking coolest sound coming out of the U.K. at the minute - even if the production does betray B'Hellmouth's voice once or twice. But to be fair, what the fuck else do you expect from the rotting larynx of the recently undeceased?
Disk 1: 8.5/10
The second disk is a different world altogether. Floating ambiances of keyboards and synthetic drums create the instrumental soundscapes of the end of the world. Unsettling as it is, the menacing threat grows throughout, beginning as a shadow and ending up with arms reaching for shotguns. Reaching into the darkened corners of the synthetic music world, disk two finds the murky, gloomy ends of the imagination. Portraying all the moods of the apocalypse, where faint glimmers of hope mix with an ominous dread, the soundtrack is where the true steps forward of The Awakening are found.
Disk 2: 9.0 / 10
