Extermination Day – Be The Consequence Review

Extermination Day’s Be the Consequence rides a doom and punk spiked heavy metal wave that is too considerate to knock you flat on your ass but instead glides you rather gracefully home with groove. An angry groove. But a groove nonetheless.

That songwriter/guitarist/bassist/vocalist Nate Towle and drummer Jason Oberuc formed Extermination Day in part from the ashes of Satan’s Satyrs should surprise no one. Though Be the Consequences is strangely both cleaner and doomier than Satan’s Satyrs, there is a similarly hybrid feel to much of the album. Its rough edges are a touch smoother, but the musical mongrel approach is not too far removed from The Lucky Ones if one accounts for the more prominent bluesy doom of it all.

However, apt comparisons do not begin and end with former bands. For one, Extermination Day certainly sounds inspired by The Obsessed, whether done consciously or not. It is not just the lyrical paranoia of “Telescopes on You”—when Towle’s voice hits a certain pitch, particularly when elongating words, he sounds almost eerily like Wino. Strictly musically, too, songs such as “Ghetto Ghouls” and “Crackin’ Skulls” sound like lost tracks from Lunar Womb. Maybe not as soulful. But the result is not unlike the punk meets bluesy doom of Maryland’s finest. And the fact that there are so few bands replicating that sound so well admittedly makes this album more appealing.

Yet Be the Consequence is more than a bluesy metal album. From Bruce Lamont’s saxophone in “Kill Like a Motherfucker” to the straightforward punk of “Street Brawler,” there’s an unavoidable “bit of everythingness” to the album. That is not to say that it is not a cohesive version of the “bit of everything” approach, or that such an approach cannot in and of itself be an aesthetic. More to the point, these guys seem unconcerned with genre classification. That lack of border and constraint seems in keeping with the spirit of the band.

Though my attraction to Be the Consequence was immediate, my appreciation for the album grew stronger with each listen. These songs are hardly mammoth, averaging about three minutes each, but they are deceptive in their depth, as the brief but no less impressive presence of Lamont’s saxophone might suggest. And it is that addicting and deceptive depth that will, no doubt, keep me crawling back to this impressive debut.