Brother Von Doom - 'Relentless'

Quirky name with a fanboy’s love of The Fantastic Four aside, this Dayton, Ohio deathcore unit fuses Vader’s precise blast beats and Euro-inspired melody into an aptly-titled speedfest.

At much as home in Heavy Metal the everlasting illustrated magazine as the music form, Brother Von Doom is an explicitly intense deathcore band with a fondness for ankle-straining blast beats ala Vader, as well as American metalcore flavors and European power and thrash modes.

One might be inclined to tell these guys to pick a subgenre and stick to it, but within the opening bars of the first cut “Barbarian Destroyer” on Brother Von Doom’s Relentless, the possibility for all of the styles to merge harmoniously is quickly established. Hitting serious aerodynamics on their unremitting album with “A Beautiful Masquerade,” “Norse Demise” and “Ravenous,” Brother Von Doom leaves vapor trails from their perpendicular velocity.

With Andreas Magnusson and Fredrik Nordstrom in their corner, Brother Von Doom has the production mastermind services behind some of the most popular acts in the business, which is partially why Relentless hums melodiously despite its primary methods of thrash and crash. Said ingenuity behind the console deceptively passes Brother Von Doom off as a melodic Euro crunch band, despite this act’s Midwestern American roots. Guitarists Brian Baxter and Tate Matthews showcase their considerable prowess with dizzying note sequences and strangely pleasing antecedents to the band’s central discordance.

Despite Justin Wilson’s tendency to roar and bellow with such veracity he’s at times out of whack to the flowing ebb of his focused rhythm section, Brother Von Doom is altogether impressive, proving there is room for song sensibility amidst unequivocal brutality.