Album Review: Neck Of The Woods – The Passenger (Basick Records)

The Passenger is the debut album from Vancouver based progressive death metallers ‘Neck of The Woods’. The album is out on September 15th 2017 via Basick Records.

Face-meltingly fast, pant-wettingly heavy…Neck of the Woods deliver a blistering slice of progressive death metal with The Passenger. Packed with technical rhythm & riffs, from the moment Bottom Feeder bursts out of the blocks you know you’re in a for a wild ride.

The opening track is small fry to the mastery of riffs & hooks that follows. Nailbiter showcases a groove that rattles the bones before the bassy throb & guitar licks of White Coats & unrelenting fury of You’ll Always Look the Same to Me step things up even more.

It’s not just the mind-blowing guitar riffing & thumping drum beats that makes The Passenger such a great listen. The vocals, dirty & harsh are stellar as are the moments of melody, brief as they might be.

The real highlight comes on a wave of technical riff mastery & soaring solo work of Face of the Villain. Utterly transfixing in its quality, death metal played with clarity & direction. A contender for the best song of the year.

Things sadly wrap up with the Foothills & Before I Rest. Finalising the ear-pleasing melody with exciting solos mixed in amongst furious blasts of death metal.

The Passenger is something special, Neck of the Woods are something special.

Neck of the Woods – The Passenger Full Track Listing:

1. Bottom Feeder
2. Nailbiter
3. White Coats
4. Open Water
5. You’ll Always Look the Same to Me
6. Face of the Villian
7. Drift
8. Foothills
9. Before I Rest

You can order the album now from Bandcamp as well merchandise. You can find out more about Neck of the Woods over on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.