While not quite as well known as some of the other metal genre benders out there, Norway’s She Said Destroy found success between 2006 and 2012 with two full lengths and an EP that took elements of thrash, black/death metal, and even some post hardcore and ran wild with it. There was a bit of a progressive flair to the band’s approach, yet there was still a cohesiveness and emphasis on riffs that helped listeners make sense of the complex elements. After 2012’s Bleeding Fiction the band would disappear for close to nine years, finally returning with this year’s Succession. Where the EP found She Said Destroy exploring mellower textures with a lot of post rock flourishes, Succession brings back the intense, heavy sections alongside these softer moments for an album that’s capable of offering something radically different from one song to the next.
The promo material mentions that some of these tracks date back to 2007 and that the group worked on a lot of them individually over the years, sometimes using completely different drum configurations and amps to get specific sounds. Add to this the complexity of the material itself, which seems to always be shapeshifting between different metal and punk styles in unexpected way, and you have an album that sounds challenging on paper. Yet She Said Destroy remains quite approachable in ways that some of the more technically and progressive oriented metal tends to be, as rather than hitting listeners with blistering tempos and more time signature changes than you can keep track of, the leads provide plenty of hooks within their respective sub-genres while the smaller details add some complexity. One example of this is the drumming, which might throw in some fills or other rhythmic deviations that shake things up, but you might not notice them on that first listen due to a particularly aggressive guitar lead. Succession transitions genres so naturally that it almost doesn’t seem like it should work, yet there’s a natural flow between each song that continually pulls you in. Opener “To Ourselves the Entire World” feels like a crossover between post hardcore, math rock, and shoegaze, while “Eyes Go Pale” has an evil and lumbering bass line that comes in somewhere between black metal and sludge. Then you have numbers like “You Will End” which goes full-on Swedish death metal and “Not Only Bridges” which has a bit of melodic hardcore to it, and it really feels like She Said Destroy has something for every type of listener. Admittedly despite just how many of these riffs and melodic transitions has stuck with me, I did find Succession to still be a bit too long, with the eight-minute closer overstaying its welcome. This doesn’t hurt the experience that much overall, but it does feel like a few sections could’ve been trimmed without losing the nuances of the material.
Succession may have some songs that explore a lot of melody and lighter textures, but the vocals keep things rooted in the metal side of the spectrum. However, that doesn’t mean that the vocal work ends up being one-dimensional compared to the rest of the band, as the harsh pitches change on each song to further accommodate what styles the instrumentals are going for. Early on you get some hardcore and sludge sounding growls, but you’ll hear everything from raspier screams, guttural growls, and creepy black metal gurgles and screams that don’t sound quite human. Given Anders Bakke’s involvement in Beaten to Death over much of the time She Said Destroy has been idle, this amount of variation makes perfect sense and it’s exciting to hear it in a completely different context.
The end does drag a bit, but there’s just so much here that proves to be utterly captivating that it makes up for it. It’s hard to make an album with complexity that still has accessible hooks, and She Said Destroy makes this look easy with how often they switch genres. It’s definitely been worth the long wait and expands naturally upon what the band was doing on their first two albums, and whether you’re a fan of black, death, sludge, post hardcore, or anything in between I expect you’ll find something to like here. I’ll definitely be coming back to this one for some time to come, and with the group now releasing material again hopefully it won’t be almost another decade before we get even more music. Succession is available from Mas-Kina Recordings.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg
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