Malevolence - Where Only The Truth Is Spoken - Review

What's up, dude? How are you? Doing great. Summer vacation, 4th of July is right around the corner. Now, we know the objective is to come back to work, school, home, whatever, with all digits intact post 4th of July. Correct. Pierre Paul of the Giants blew his, I think his fingers off a few years ago in football and was never the same football player after that when he was a pass rusher trying to take down quarterback. You can't grab if you don't have fingers because you blew them off. How can you grab somebody's face mask and tear them to the ground, right? Well, that's called a face mask and also roughing the passer, but that's neither here nor there. That's my sporting knowledge and that's what I'm sticking with.

All right. That sounds good. What are we talking about today? We're talking about your choice. Well, it's your choice, actually, but I'm into it. It's the new one from Malevolence, where only the truth is spoken. These guys, I'm new to them as I am to a lot of the stuff we talk about here, but I like this. I like this band. I like this album. Yeah, they're from Britain, so they're British, and they are 15 years into this. Fairly brutal. They're not for the faint of heart if you're looking to listen to something like Modern Ghost. Don't listen to this. If you're trying to listen to Modern Sleep Token, not for you. It has the brutality that John and I like and roll out of bed and start thinking about.

So, yeah, I mean, Where Only the Truth is Spoken is a really, for me, was a Baines and Hall show-off, and those are the guitarists in the band.

Yeah, solid stuff, man. This record is just lousy with killer riffs, man. They're all over this album. The question I have is it felt like the vocals, Alan Taylor's vocals, were right up front and Wilkie Robinson was sort of hidden at bass and Charlie Thorpe, the drums, a drummer, was also very up front. I was kind of disappointed with the fact that the low end of this, the bass parts and the guitar parts were pushed to the back, and you're a producer, you would know better than me. Was that done on purpose, or am I just hearing things?

I don't know. Yeah, it's all personal choice, you know, or the personal preference of the band or whoever it is that's doing the mix. I like the mix on it. I thought it was really clean. It's a busy mix. There's a lot going on in these tracks. There's a lot of audio data to deal with, and I thought they did a real nice job with it. I didn't notice that anything was too far forward or too pushed back, but truth be told, I listened to this mostly in my car over the last week, and this comes up every once in a while, like where you choose to listen to music. You know, is it on AirPods or in your car or on a nice system in the house? I mean, out here in the garage, you know, studio lair, I've got a really respectable setup. Unfortunately, I don't get to just sit out here and listen to stuff, but listening on a respectable car setup, I thought it was pretty clean, you know, evenly balanced, punchy where it needed to be.

Yeah, so I have an Alexa in every single room in the house, and I put it on everywhere and listened to it while I'm working, and then obviously in the car. The car stereo sounds much better, but I did notice in the car that guitars were more in the back, and for me, the power of this band, no disrespect to Mr. Taylor, but the guitars are the driving force in this band, the change in tempos. For me, it's just sonically savage. It should be like the soundtrack to Wolverine, you know, violent Wolverine, not Hugh Jackman Wolverine, but violent Wolverine in the comics just ripping people apart with his claws. Like, that's what I heard.

No, not like that. Oh, yeah. Well, I can't speak to any of that, so I'm going to take your word for it, and I'm sure our illustrious video producer will drop some meow in there as needed.

Heard some Killswitch Engage when I first started listening to it, but once it gets going, you forget about Killswitch altogether. You know, some proggy elements in there, front and center. Lots and lots of spit from Alex Taylor, and then there's at 2.30 in Bruising Breakdown, and at three minutes in, some serious fucking groove that was badass.

Yeah. Not to overstate it, but this record is just all about riffs. Killer riffs.Another thing I noticed about it, too, is that it's, I don't want to say they're genre-hopping around with it, but there's a lot of different flavor on this record to my ears. There's some like 80s, you know, straight up 80s. metal in there. There's, like you said, there's some prog in there, some hardcore in there. I picked up flavors of different bands, which brings up a point.

Reading online a little bit, you know, ran through some Reddit threads about this record to see what people were saying about it. And as with all bands and albums, you know, everybody has their opinion. One of the common things, you know, like this is Crowbar with Five Finger Death Punch vocals and things like that, which again, everybody's got their opinion. Everybody's welcome to them. But that's a common thing that kind of drives me nuts, you know, nonstop comparisons of one album, you know, to other bands. And, oh, they sound just like X or Y or ABC. And I'm not saying people shouldn't feel that way, but I don't know. I try to listen to and decide how I feel about an album based on just what I'm hearing that's in front of me. And sometimes I guess it's, I don't know, maybe I'm the asshole here. You know what I mean?

Well, that's true. And you also don't know a lot. And I'm not really sure what your point is, but if you listen to, if it's all the same to you, there are parts that sound like Kirk from Crowbar in there. Alex definitely changed his vocal structure and the way that he was singing to be a knuckle-dragging, doomy, you know, trudge through the fucking quicksand. So, you know, I don't know. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder or ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. But there's some real ugly in there that is very Crowbar-like, which I appreciated very much.

I don't feel like Crowbar has put out anything of relevance in a long time, no offense to Kirk, but this sound coming from Malevolence was what drew me into the record to begin with, was the very Crowbar-esque but also has a lot of riffs in it. You know, maybe I said that earlier about people making comparisons because those comparisons often get brought out in a negative fashion. You know what I mean? Like, how could these guys not fucking do their own thing or whatever? They're just ripping off other bands, and maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. But I don't know. As somebody who has tried a lot over the years to write music and create stuff, of course I take inspiration from all kinds of bands. Not all of it's heavy. Most of it is, sure, but I don't know. Maybe I feel like I get offended on behalf of the band or something when I see that.

You know, I don't know. You know what? Black Sabbath is doing the final show this weekend. You know, I saw pictures of Ozzy and Iommi and Geezer and Bill. And, you know, they were the, I guess, the maestros of heavy metal. And they're old. They look like grandparents now. And I'm glad that they're going to be able to do one last show. But there's nothing new under the sun since Black Sabbath came along. Everything has been fairly done before. Every now and then you'll get a band like, you know, Turnstyle that somehow mixes salsa music with hardcore and it works.

In this case, it's okay to take what you like about Crowbar and what you like about Killswitch Engage and go make an album. You know, and it feels like that. And I think that in the end of the day, Malevolence stepped up their game with this record. It is far superior to anything that they've done to date. There's a reason why it's getting the notoriety that it's getting. And it's well deserved.

If you're a metalhead, it doesn't matter if you like Doom, Prog, Thrash, Crossover Thrash, you name it. You're probably going to like this record. Like, I like a lot of those genres, some more than others, but I like the record. It's not generally the hardcore thing or whatever isn't really my bag, but I really like what these guys did. And maybe I like it because the record is so loaded with great riffs in every song, even if it's not my favorite song, there's still great riffs in that song.

Counterfeit, they had evil, evil tones in there. And, you know, kind of along the lines of maybe a little bit of Slayer. But then it breaks apart into a sing-along, you know, kind of part, and then some ripping guitar solos, which is different from the prior track. So it just, you don't know what you're going to get. But in the end of the day, the riffs are themainstay all the way through.

Yeah, he is the... Josh is a, my understanding, he's the main riff writer, and then the rest of the members come in and add their flavor to it. But he is a beast. He writes some great riffs. Yeah, he's awesome.

And I also have to call out, if it's all the same to you at the beginning, there's almost like a cute beat on a cowbell. Is that correct? Did you hear that when it started? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah. I just giggled as soon as I heard that. There's so much ear candy on this record, little things like that done either by the musicians or in production. So I loved it. Yeah, that made me giggle for sure. Great. Yeah, I had to call it out. I figured you would pick up on that.

What other tracks, what other little nuances you pick up on? So Help Me God is definitely one of the standouts for me. The opener of it is such a banger, man. It's got like this progressive, gentle kind of feel to it with these fantastic dissonant chord spikes and real ugly chugs. The breakdown is absolutely just atrociously gnarly in it. It's so good.

Imperfect Picture is another one. I love the swing vibe to it, the swing feel and the tempo changes, which are all over this record, are super, super effective. They'll slow it down. Then they'll slow it down a little bit more. Then it'll come back to full speed. I just think it's great songwriting, great song craft.

And whether you think it sounds like Crowbar or Five Finger or Killswitch or whatever, I think it's, for my tastes, it's a good record. And I enjoyed that a lot of listening to it. I think there's a reason why Randy Blythe from Lamb of God also jumped on here. I think he's a pretty well-established individual in the metal community. And he probably heard what was going on with this record and wanted to put his stamp on it. So if it's good enough for Randy, it's probably good enough for the three listeners and viewers that we have.

Yeah, I think it's great. And it's definitely one that if you're into heavy music, it's absolutely worth a listen. There's something in there that you're going to like, even if you don't like the whole record. The numerous influences and inspiration that they clearly pulled from, I think, show through.

Again, I have no problem with genre hopping and influences are influences. They're going to come from when you create anything, whatever it is. The likelihood that you're going to pull from the library of stuff that you love, it's probably going to show up in there in one fashion or another. I mean, if I were to sit down and try and write a salsa track, it would be very difficult for me to not do something heavy in there. So that sort of thing doesn't bother me at all. I like that kind of shit.

Well, and for those who don't know, I went and bought a bass and got all the gear, all the pedals to match Peter Steele from Type O Negative. And if I ever had the time and also the patience, and I do lack patience with learning things, to learn how to really play the bass. Like I've been able to copy some Type O Negative songs and play it and it's pretty fun. But if I was ever to sit down and start writing and get good enough to do that, it's probably going to sound like Peter Steele, at least his bass parts. Because that's what you love.

But yeah, but you know, I don't know what I would do. I would do Peter Steele's tones and setup, but I would be doing power trip riffs on bass, you know, and take Blake Ibanes and what he's done with power trip and Fugitive and combine the two and then find a singer that can do both Peter Steele as well as Riley Gale. And that would be the kind of music that I would want to write. But, you know, in the end of the day, it's influenced by two bands I love.

Yeah, I think it's tough to avoid it. And I don't care if a band sounds a bit like another band. It just it doesn't bother me. I mean, maybe it would if I hated that other band. But what the hell? And, you know, nobody gives a shit what I think anyway. So who cares? I don't give a fuck what you think. I just do this podcast just to get my face on YouTube. You get it out there somehow, right?

Well, it's an ugly freaking thing. You know, I got to put it out some way. You said it. Not me, buddy.

Hey, listen, you said you made a comment that there's nothing new out there, which I think is largely an accurate statement. There's not there's just not that much stuff out that people are putting out that you listen to and go, I have never heard anything like that before. There's just not that much.

I think a band we reviewed, Carbomb last, I think that Greg Kubacki and those guys, I think they're doing somethingthat's a little different in that he is he's he's creating something that's a little I would call it more new than not by what he's into and exploiting the. equipment that he's got at his disposal. I think that he's doing something that's a little different. And I'm excited to say that we are going to have him on the podcast sometime in hopefully the next month or so. So we'll get to ask him.

But I don't know. I think Car Bomb is a band that's doing something a little different, even if Malevolent isn't breaking new ground with this album. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think that this record will end up on some best of 2025 lists. And it's well warranted.

You know, if you're looking for some new tunes and you want to be out on a boat and you want to piss off everybody else that's on a lake or a river or on the ocean, this is a great record to piss off everybody else that's on boats. It's a hard record. Yeah, it's heavy. It's got weight to it. It's got some teeth. It's got some ass. Sure does. Sure does.

Well, it was a good call. Good. Well, I'm glad you like it. And hopefully our three listeners will enjoy it as well.

Yeah. Have a good fourth. I hope you don't stub your toe or do anything to mess up that jawline of yours that, you know, everybody's envious of. Well, I'll try not, you know, light a firecracker like a stogie. Yeah. Try and avoid that. But, you know, you just don't know. You get enough of the immutable ale in you. Yeah. Start doing some stupid things. So, yeah, be safe this weekend.

Yeah. All right. Well, I will do my best to not blow up myself or I did finish all the immutable ale. It's gone. Long gone. But, you know, I'll probably have a couple of beers. That's fair. Well, enjoy. This is a good time. And I look forward to the next one, dude.

All right. See ya. See ya. See ya.