Genre : thall, Metalcore, Modern death metal
Released : March 24th, 2023
Label : Self-release
FFO : Vildhjarta, Humanity's Last Breath, Allt, Grayscale Season
Adding yet another string to his bow, Catsclaw is one of Calle Thomer's latest musical outputs outside of his main gigs (Vildhjarta / Humanity's Last Breath), in tandem with American vocalist James Morgan.
As one can expect with anything featuring Calle's style of writing, this thing is packed with angular, jittery and stupidly heavy riffs that always seem to catch the ear off-guard even when you think you know what you're in for.
Catsclaw's sound does of course unsurprisingly share stylistical similarities with Vildhjarta / HLB but is very capable of standing as its own thing by mixing Calle's signature thall riffs with more melodic metalcore elements or even scraping the surface of guttural modern death metal, with James Morgan's vocals often guiding the stylistical tone and direction of the EP while the guitars offer a perpetual assault on the senses, capable of leaving the listener shell-shocked.
It was to be expected, but Buster Odeholm (Humanity's Last Breath / Vildhjarta / Thrown) is of course involved with mixing and mastering duties with Elliott Merriman (Our Common Collapse) and Jeremy Schaeffer (Earth Groans) also having a hand in production, elevating "Human Fission" to crushing heights and making it an exceptionally great sounding debut release you simply cannot miss out on as a downtuned heavy music enthusiast.