Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a death metal/black metal concert was filmed and that the sound was somehow screwed up. Watching the film without the sound, a knowledgeable headbanger would still have some idea what a band sounded like. How? Simply by observing the mosh pit. A grindcore band that plays at breakneck speed most or all of the time --
Carcass or
Cannibal Corpse, for example -- would typically send the pit into overdrive and keep the moshers from slowing down (except between songs). But if the pit operates at different levels of intensity, it's because the band likes to change tempos a lot. Clearly,
Rifles at Recess falls into the second category; if the band performed
Whisper in Tongues in its entirety on-stage, the mosh pit would be going wild one minute and slowing down to a crawl the next. This is the sort of death metal/black metal disc that thrives on frequent tempo changes; if
Rifles' members are pounding away at 500 miles an hour, a medium or slow tempo is just around the corner.
Whisper in Tongues is also the type of album that some metalheads would describe as "technical black metal," meaning that some of the guitar riffs borrow a thing or two from '80s power metal. But for all their aggression, classic power metal bands like
Judas Priest,
Iron Maiden, and
Queensrÿche were quite musical and melodic;
Whisper in Tongues, however, is ultimately about bombast, not musicality or nuance -- and the extremist vocals (which fluctuate between metalcore screaming and death metal's satanic growl) aren't for the faint of heart. Tempo changes and all, this 2003 release doesn't sidestep death metal/black metal's limitations; nor is it supposed to. And even though the material isn't terribly original -- there are countless other bands doing this type of thing -- moshers with a taste for extreme metal will find
Whisper in Tongues to be a decent, if predictable, listen. ~ Alex Henderson