Having slept on the first few releases from Australia’s Snorlax, I approached Toxic Current—the Aussie one-man blackened death metal band’s third full-length—with fresh ears. I won’t bore you with any references to a certain anime franchise. But like an energy vampire I will bore you to tears with the following brief review of Toxic Current.
If your music veers off course enough that it’s often described by people who are only vaguely familiar with metal as “extreme metal,” then I want to hear some absolutely unhinged stuff. And that’s exactly what Snorlax delivers on Toxic Current. The blackened death metal categorization still largely works, but there’s also a healthy, very much detectable pinch of grind sprinkled almost equally throughout. That surprising element really sold me on Snorlax. If there’s anything Toxic Current could use more of it is grind. But the existing, roughly 70/30 blackened death to grind ratio is effective enough.
Another general rule is that if you’re a one-person band, please have some sort of ethos or vision and transfer that to your recording. If it’s a bit of a mess, you can clean that up. Or don’t. But your mission cannot be to sound like a full band. You are not a full band. And you have the benefit of your one, undiluted voice. Fortunately, Snorlax’s Brendan Auld also, seemingly, adheres to this rule, as Toxic Current certainly sounds purposefully and intentionally brutal, caustic, and sometimes even catchy.
What I love most about Toxic Current are the little hints at care and depth. It’s the threading of a riff (“Manifestation”). Or the subtle nod that the band is about to drop a tonal change on you right quick (the mostly ambient instrumental “1984” before Snorlax kicks it into high gear with “Insignificance”). And, of course, speaking generally, it’s also the willingness to hit you—and hit you often—with a tire iron to the face (“No Fate,” “Into the Void,” “Control,” and most everything else).
Snorlax’s Toxic Current is well produced and well written fun that is not just brutal but also smarter than it will be given credit for. And not because of the band name which, admittedly, seems at least questionable. No, it is smarter than it will be given credit for because the proper mix of chaos and coalesce—disfunction and function—is, or seems, anyway, difficult to achieve. Yet Snorlax has achieved just that with Toxic Current.
