TON
"Bow Down to Extinction"
Ossuary Industries
Death Metal
2015
Tracklisting:
1. Severed
2. Condemnation
3. Burned to the Truth
4. Propaganda Machine
5. The Flood
6. Self-Indulgence
7. The Patriot
8. Oblivion
TON is one of many bands that I unfortunately let slip through my fingers back in the day when I started delving deeper into the death metal rabbit hole back in the late '90's/early 2000's. It's a band that I heard about and seen them pop up on the interwebs and heard one or two songs but right through the fingers they went and never picked anything up from them. Definitely not because I didn't like what I heard, it was just one of those things. Mostly due to having a shitty paying job at the time and bills up the ass so I didn't really buy much of anything back then. So having their second full-length entitled "Bow Down to Extinction" in front of me now, listening to it and having a chance to review it is a real treat.
TON has been in the game since 1993 but "Bow Down to Extinction" is only their second official full length release, with four demos between '93-'95 and '97 followed by a compilation of their final two demos "Point of View" ('95) and "Blind Follower" ('97) which was released in '98. 1999 saw their first official release "Plague" on United Guttural Records (RIP). Fast forward after about a sixteen years hiatus (if I remember hearing correctly back in the day) to 2015 for the release of this beast of an album "Bow Down to Extinction" on Ossuary Industries. This brutal trio from Canton, Ohio consists of bassist Jeff Shepler, guitarist Dan Gates and drummer Kevin Kraft. Notice I didn't say anything about vocalist? That's because all three have their vocal chords in that cookie jar in some form or fashion. From the three live videos I checked out it seems that Jeff is the main vocalist but on some songs, "Self-Indulgence" being one of them, Jeff starts off but is shortly followed by Kevin, who go back and forth with each other then in comes Dan with his vocals then back and forth between all three. Confusing? Fuck it, it's awesome. Vocals as a whole are a mix of classic death growls, low gutturals and pain induced highs. The music throughout the album is a great mix of classic death metal ranging from fast paced blasts and speed picking to midpaced brutality along with quite a bit of groove elements in a lot of their songs on the album. In fact the beginning of track four "Propaganda Machine" starts off with some funky bass line and drums before a heavy groove guitar riff joins in then just starts bashing in your skull. Track two "Condemnation" is another example of excellent transitioning from ferocious blasts into some killer groove feeling riffs which lead to involuntary head movement at the very least, if not the whole upper body around the minute and a half mark.
"Bow Down to Extinction" was recorded by Troy Shaffer at Sounds Like a Plan Studios, mixed and mastered at Tsun Tsun Productions and the artwork and layout was done by Bahrull Marta. Also, be on the lookout for the band's third full length "Ashes Where They Stood" which will be released August 14,2020 so if you haven't heard TON yet, definitely check out some of their stuff either at their facebook page or bandcamp and if you like what you hear you can get this album from either their bandcamp site or at the Ossuary Industries site. Then go and pre-order "Ashes..." by following the links on TON's facebook page. Can't wait to get my hands on that one myself.
Ossuary Industries Facebook Page