Molotov Solution - 'The Harbinger' Review

Molotov Solution scores sweet deal with Metal Blade, and gets nice and cozy next to Whitechapel sound-wise in their new home.

This writer can preach until he has lockjaw, and obviously the fight is well-lost. If today’s metal fans aren’t dictating the overcooked stay of breakdown-addiction, the bands themselves force the issue by ramming album after album of prototypical chug-a-chug-chug motifs ad nauseum. Write Molotov Solution’s The Harbinger upon the master list which has grown so long the top half might as well be discarded.

If Molotov Solution (who do carry a killer moniker) could simply maintain the thrash modes briefly manifesting amidst the emulated chug-chug-a-chug-chug chug threads robbing the title track and “Monolithic Apparatus” of heightened acceleration, then The Harbinger might’ve become a rare deathcore attraction.

Instead, Molotov Solution models themselves after Immolation and Whitechapel, particularly the low-end reverb crusting out of the band’s string section, while vocalist Nick Arthur issues murky throat bursts of varied pitches, making The Harbinger that much more unpleasant in nature.

Their sound isn’t intended to be pretty as Molotov Solution bears a few itches in their bellies to vomit out via The Harbinger. There is firm skill in this band, particularly when momentary audile brushstrokes are woven amidst Molotov Solution’s brute ugliness. You can hear them blossoming on the concussive “Enslaved” and they’re peppered all over the otherwise nasty “Awakening.” Despite all of the formulas running rampant through the Cannibal Corpse-courting “Only the Dead,” Molotov Solution do manage to impress with tuneful sublets and back melodies on the brutish track.

There’s no getting around it, however; this is the sound of today’s metal, like it or not. Molotov Solution may be doing very little to move this style forward, but they admittedly give the current generation of headbangers a lot to split their neck tendons to.