Black Dogs first came to my attention earlier this year, when they utterly annihilated Cardiff supporting Hatebreed. Their fantastic blend of aggressive and powerful vocals, mixed in with just the right amount of noise and melody in the instrumentation is incredible and it makes for a gripping overall sound.
Their new album Grief perfectly sums up exactly what this band is about, seemingly capturing their live performance within the ten tracks it contains.
It gets off to a fantastic start with Hellhole, which opens with sheer aggression and in-your-face vocals. It’s the perfect way to get the album moving right from the get-go and shows you that this band mean business – there’s no messing around with drawn out introduction tracks here, they just dive straight in for the kill before you even know what’s happening!
One of the absolute highlights of the album is the stunning track Traitors. It gets going with great harsh vocals atop of a wall of guitars, but the thing that really makes this track awesome is the bass solo. Even though there isn’t much to it, with it pretty much consisting of just a repeated riff, it adds a lot to the track and it stands out as a result.
The only thing that lets this album down is the slight lack of variety. Opening a song with vocals can be very striking, but if it’s done for the majority of the tracks then it winds up becoming a little repetitive. Aside from that, Grief is an incredible album and it really hammers home the fact that Black Dogs are destined for great things.
9/10
