It’s rare that a band comes along and not only borrows heavily from a number of popular, powerful genres of music in the beginning of their career and manages to carry not only the musical style but the ethos and work ethic throughout their career. Malevolence are a rare band indeed however, having scratched and clawed their way from the basements and social clubs of Sheffield to becoming one of the best, most sought after live bands in heavy music today. Famed for their levels of not only aggression but also high levels of technicality and above all, a sense of humour, they currently stand at a level few other bands have reached. Indeed, in terms of quality they possess a much more consistent (Thought smaller) and high quality catalogue than their mates in While She Sleeps, who they came through the scene with.
With a sound that has encompassed bands like Crowbar, Trivium, Terror and Lamb Of God to name but a few, at the fore, Malevolence have always been heavy. Whether that’s a headbanging, breakneck drums and finger shredding riff style of heavy or a crushing, antagonizing form more akin to metallic hardcore, they’ve never let up across their four previous releases. This has allowed them to weave in and out of festivals and lineups with ease, as much at home at Bloodstock as Outbreak, without diehards of either turning their nose up. Indeed, they could now headline the latter easily and only a fool would bet against them one day headlining Bloodstock, but of course that depends on the momentum of their recorded output, of which, before Where Only Truth Has Spoken has never faltered.
There was never any serious doubt that this record would be anything less than good, but Where Only Truth Is Spoken manages to not only tighten the bands grip on the upper echelons of heavy music, but has some of the bands best work to date on it. Opening with ‘Blood From The Leech’ it’s balls to the wall from the jump. A stomping blast of everything that makes the band great, it’s lead by the distinctive bark of Alex Taylor and the chugging, monstrous guitars of Konan Hall and Josh Baines. Konan himself makes his first appearance on the record on Trenches, his tortured vocals as always a wonderfully welcome counterpoint to Alex.
The first moment of the band reaching world class status comes on ‘If It’s All The Same To You’, which features one of Konan’s best choruses to date and comes with a music video featuring the iconic Brick Top from the classic Guy Ritchie film Snatch chewing the scenery. The hook will bury itself into your skull like a well placed icepick and you can almost picture a gigantic crowd bellowing it back to them as pyro engulfs the stage. “Salt The Wounds” lows things down for a lighters in the air, arms around your mates almost ballad of a track that doesn’t quite live up to the lofty standards the band set themselves with ‘Higher Place” from the previous record, but still packs emotional heft and picks up the pace by the end.
The album peaks with ‘Counterfeit’ and ‘In Spite’, the former being an absolute rager with a cheeky Slayer-esque solo in the middle and the latter featuring one of the best guest vocal performances of recent times. Giving his seal of approval to the band, the iconic growl of Randy Blythe (Lamb Of God) graces the track and Alex even manages to hold his own with him. It isn’t too wild to say that the band can now count the Richmond natives as their contemporaries.
As a record, it’s up their with the bands best. More consistent than any of their other efforts throughout, it never eases off the gas or dips at any point. It is perhaps lacking something immediately memorable like ‘Serpents Chokehold’, ‘Severed Ties’ or ‘Life Sentence’ but time will tell on that front. On this form, there’s only really Bleed From Within and Trivium who can stand toe to toe with the Steel City crew on current output of arena sized metal that doesn’t bow to trends. Give them a barrierless slot headlining any stage at a festival and watch it become a sea of bloodied, battered and bewitched bodies.