UMUR
"The Contaminated Void" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Coldworker. The album was released through Relapse Records in November 2006. Coldworker was formed in early 2006 by former Nasum drummer Anders Jakobson. Nasum disbanded in May 2005 after the tragic death of guitarist/vocalist Mieszko Talarczyk in the late 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster, and about a year later Jakobson started to look for musicians for a new deathgrind project. A five-piece lineup was assembled and the writing and recording of "The Contaminated Void" began in mid-2006.
If anyone expected Coldworker to be a continuation of Nasum, they´d be dead wrong, although "The Contaminated Void" features many blastbeat parts and deathgrind features. Those features are combined with heavy and more brutal death metal elements though, and to my ears Coldworker is ultimately more a death metal act than a deathgrind ditto. The vocals are one-dimensional growling, and the tracks typically vary between blasting deathgrind sections, and groove laden mid-paced heavy sections. "Return to Ashes" is an example of a track, where the latter style is dominant.
The material on the 14 track, 39:37 minues long album are generally well written, but it´s not an album featuring many standout tracks, or much variation between tracks (despite the above mentioned tempo changes). So a couple of tracks into the album the tracks start to sound a bit the same (with a few exceptions like the above mentioned "Return to Ashes"). The harsh sounding production job unfortunately doesn´t help the songs to sound more dynamic. So upon conclusion "The Contaminated Void" is an album with both good quality features and some less interesting ones. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.