ZATOKREV (Czech for "Blood For This") is a Swiss group from Basel. Their sound is a mix of Doom, Death and Sludge Metal, a surely interesting combination for a musical premise. Today, we'll take a look at a reissue of their 2004 self-titled effort. Let me spoil the review for you: I like "Zatokrev" as a four-track record, and I think the "Zatokrev" we actually got is a pretty decent album.

I dig the vocals on the LP, agony and nihilism (with a bit of a DSBM edge) but still intense. The lyrics are also somewhat audible, but I can't really give an opinion on those, since I haven't looked them up. About the music and writing well... I really feel like the group has much more talent for writing medium-long songs, not long ones. I get that it's Doom/Sludge, it's supposed to be longer and slower, but I still enjoyed the shorter tracks of the record a ton more. Another thing I experienced is that this is great workout material, I did some pushups during my listening of the LP, and even with its slower pace, it provides a good adrenaline pump.

About what I said in the beginning of this review, the album would be good if it had four tracks. Can you guess which one I think should have been left out? Why, the longest one, obviously. "Fourem" I felt almost possessed no actual merit, so I don't think it was ruined by it's length, it was a bad song from the start, due to the generic and uninspired writing. I'll probably check out their works after this, because with most tracks, I felt some great potential and ideas that could be further developed in their sound. But as things currently are, I strongly think that the group should have stuck to 4-5 minute songs with this thing.