One of the things I love about Death Metal is the sheer stamina it can take to listen to a whole album in one sitting without bleeding out of your ears a little or punching something in the face.  This is a quality that makes me incredibly happy, people say that true art is supposed to invoke emotion, if that is the case then Death Metal would be the Picasso of the musical world, pissing everyone off and then just mutilating itself to piss them off a little more.

Enter LAGO with their debut album "Tyranny".  Quite often when I'm sitting at home on my own resisting the urge to set fire to things I wonder what kind of reaction you would get by playing something like this in an extremely middle class religious setting like a really nice baptism in Surrey.  I think those present would probably just start bleeding out of as many orifices as they could shortly before flaying the skin from their fellow well-wisher's faces.  It's thoughts like these that keep me away from society but nonetheless it stands as a true testament to the blood thirsty nature of LAGO's music.

This full length death fest is a perfect example of how to write Death Metal to the highest calibre.  There isn't anything experimental about it and they don't fuck around with intros at all, this is just pure balls to the wall brutality.  The album kicks off with "I" and instantly tries to tear the face off of any unwary listeners that may have strayed in from a MILEY CYRUS show.  It pretty much doesn't stop for another 40 minutes.  It is difficult to pontificate on this kind of music because really, if you are already a fan then you know how it is going to play out and if you're not a fan then you probably aren't listening to it.  What I really love about the album though is that there are a few little gems thrown into the mix that you might not find with a lot of other Death Metal bands releasing their debut album.  Firstly, the production is fantastic and not just in a super crisp and over polished way.  The guitar solo in the first track is beautifully written and it blends into the mix so well that you barely even notice it creeping in there.  This is something that takes good production to achieve and is not something that you will find very often in fairly fresh bands.  There is one gripe I have with the production though and that is the wholly unnecessary use of fade in/outs on some of the songs.  I abhor fade ins at the start of songs and fade outs are only justifiable on very rare occasions.

Did I mention they have a violin?  I have to admit that I get a bit of a boner over them and they drop a seriously sexual piece of violin work into the end of the penultimate song "Reckoning".  God I'm salivating now just thinking about it.  Violins are another thing that you don't hear skilfully employed in Metal, let alone in Death Metal.  It's little touches like this alongside the unrelenting aggression of the album that makes this a winner.