Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Dead Shape Figure
Label: Season Of Mist
Release: 2008
Length: 47:37
Rating: 4.5/5
If the morning tells you about the day, then understanding bands means constantly digging back into their early days, to see how much progress they have or haven’t made from record to record. Finnish heavyweight grinders Dead Shape Figure, with their honest hunger for domination and for proving themselves on the front lines of the brutal competition of metal wreckers, set their sights straight on the realm of the absolute elite. Instead of posing and dazzling the masses with a colorful palette of aesthetically polished instruments and outfits, from day one they set a standard of top-notch musical execution and honesty! You can check that at their shows, and I was curious whether they managed to capture it just as well on their debut The Grand Karoshi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvxMUSv8YfA
Karoshi is a word that comes from the Japanese term for death by overwork, and burnt-out, broken grinders have long since outgrown the status of an Eastern phenomenon. True to the name, Dead Shape Figure crowned the album with a batch of ten high-octane tracks reflecting their truly indestructible hunger for success, which they’ve always been ready to sacrifice everything for. Thousands of hours of rehearsals, a pile of gigs and a thorough build-up of every elementary part of the music are how the quintet from the small town of Vantaa meant to carve a path among ringing names like The Haunted, Slayer, Dew Scented, Kreator and similar granite-solid, compact rivals on the death metal-fueled thrash scene. For comparison, I’d go with the Scandinavian one: The Haunted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9fFslis_oM
That parallel with the excellent records Made Me Do It, or even a bit more with One Kill Wonder, makes total sense when measuring the sharpness of The Grand Karoshi. From the restrained intro onward, The Grand Karoshi builds up to the full sweep of a mighty, cliché-free blow of sound with the track Blades, which proves what the DSF quintet is actually made of. The retro return to the golden days of death thrash dominance, marked by the rock-solid rhythm section of outstanding drummer Raikku and bassist Neibu, is topped off by a guitar arsenal of playful, razor-sharp guitars from the duo Jehku – Erska, while the central axis of it all is the demonically possessed and furiously angry vocal of singer Galzi. Lesser The Man is an outstanding continuation of the thrash orgasm. “Bleeding hands holding dull weapons behalf the one that blithers / An icon with guilt framed shit / Born as equal, a statue of virtue, the mirror ever-lying / For the false achievements we crack and burn away” thunder the verses of the stanza with which the Finnish frontrunners pledge to beat the boredom of you listeners as well as of a generic, bored scene, and Finland becomes the first backdrop for a showdown with the imagery that MTV drilled into our little brains with HIM and Ville Valo. The Grand Karoshi sounds aggressive from start to finish, physically grueling and draining, and the playful rhythm of bloodthirsty catharsis drags mercilessly on with the track Bend The Weak and a bullseye hit with Remington Lucifer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gimUUgaAG2k
“It takes time to build a perfection / To erase is just a flick of the switch / Hollow head, a sacrilege / Trauma for life, embodied once for all” are lyrics of opposition to a modern society teetering on the brink of its own inevitable collapse, while the unyielding rhythm and a sticky “groove” pour fresh fire onto the bonfire of pure enjoyment and fun. I could go on singing praises of the no less relentless hedonistic cramp dealt by Fight Against, Lie Behalf or Blitherin Icon, but I won’t! Every pair of ears has its own taste, as I often stress, and you’ll hit the peak, if you haven’t already, in the superb performance and build-up of the title track Karoshi/From Contempt To Obliteration, which has plenty of melody as well as a mantra, with which DSF once again brand into themselves the words of an eternal pledge to hard work and swear by the true reasons for taking part in music in the occupation of this rather demented world. And they do it in a way that’ll make you crank the knobs on your amp all the way up, and the booming volume of outstanding music will carve, with seismic waves, a new path to your personal relief from all everyday frustrations and pent-up rage!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO8u2p4WLHA
To sum up: Dead Shape Figure have birthed an outstanding thrash product with their debut, and its intensity, quality performance, razor-sharp top-tier production and heap of just-right hooks compel you to start believing in a force you’ll keep gravitating toward in the future too. This wellspring of primal energy, from which only pure enthusiasm and a passionate craving for more can be drawn, is this time not cast in the shadow of the American flag, but sports the white-and-blue battle colors of the land of a thousand lakes. The Grand Karoshi is, no faking, one of the better records to make your personal arsenal of toxic metal relics even more complete, and your horizon of outstanding metal names rounded out with one more name — a name worth counting on in the future too!
Lineup
Galzi – vocals
Neibu – bass
Juhku – guitar
Erska – guitar
Raikku – drums
Guest musicians:
– Mr. Crab – guitar solo on tracks 6, 8 & 10
– Tom Gardiner – guitar solo on track 5
– Tapio Liinoja – backing vocals on Perinde Ac Cadaver
– Antti Silventoinen – backing vocals on Karoshi
Production
Dead Shape Figure & Antti Silventoinen
Tracklist
1. Intro
2. Blades
3. Lesser The Man
4. Bend The Weak
5. Remington Lucifer
6. Fight Against, Lie Behalf
7. Blithering Icon
8. Karoshi/From Contempt To Obliteration
9. 6 x 9
10. Perinde Ac Cadaver
