Metal Underground.com

For those who hadn’t heard yet, Success Will Write Apocalypse Across the Sky is the next big thing in death metal to come out of Florida. Following in the footsteps of their big name predecessors, the band has attempted to create the most unrelentingly brutal offering possible with “The Grand Partition And The Abrogation Of Idolatry.” The overblown titles are a recurring theme for S.W.A.A.T.S., as they even rose out of the ashes of a previous band with the overly long name “Bodies in the Gears of the Apparatus.” Each of the songs on their debut album achieves the goal of utter destruction, but after repeated listens it seems like the lengthy names are there just to make up for the fact that the tracks are uniformly short and repetitive.

In a fashion more indicative of grindcore than death metal, the songs all range from between one-and-a-half and three-and-and-half minutes long, for a total run time just over 30 minutes. Add in the fact that two of the songs are composed entirely of samples, and the result is somewhat less music than would be expected from a full-length album. The problem is compounded by the nature of the music, as there isn’t a whole lot to distinguish any given track from any other track unless the listener is willing to dig in deep and study the music closely.

The few distinguishing factors in the songs are done well, however. The opening track “10,000 Sermons, 1 Solution” uses a strange sound effect in the background that is somewhere between a distorted female vocal part and a mechanical whirring. The song “Cattle” features a slightly catchy chorus, accompanied by a backing guitar solo, where the vocalist screams “Off with their heads!” repeatedly. The combination is virtually guaranteed to get the heads banging to the beat for the short amount of time it sticks around.

Like quite a few extreme metal bands, the lyrics are focused on the negative aspects of life and frequently reference religion. Anyone who listens to heavy metal should know by now that trashing on religion is an honored tradition in the genre, but the themes in the album bear special mentioning as a warning for those who might be offended. Rather than going for the abstract ideals or over-the-top Satanic themes found in many metal styles, S.W.A.A.T.S. deals almost exclusively with real world issues, which means the lyrics have the possibility of hitting much closer to home for the audience. For example “Of Worms, Jesus Christ, and Jackson County Missouri” seems to refer to the Mormon belief that the Garden of Eden is actually located inside Jackson County.

While the album is short and repetitive, it’s also brutal as hell. “The Grand Partition And The Abrogation Of Idolatry” almost never lets up with its relentless attack, except for the few brief samples laced throughout the tracks. The exceedingly heavy nature of the music is a double-edged sword, however. Fans of grindcore and the more extreme death metal will have exactly what they are looking for, but it’s also highly unlikely that anyone will remember even a single moment of the songs once the album ends.