CATEGORY 7 – Category 7

vote
8.0

• Band:
  CATEGORY 7
• Duration: 00:51:45
• Available from: 26/07/2024
• Label:

• Metal Blade Records

Category 7 is a line-up of solid names, immediately familiar and with their respective CVs more than worthy of respect.
In these cases we usually talk about a 'supergroup', a term that in the opinion of the writer means little or nothing, but it is evident that there are some 'discrete' talents put together for this new band. John Bush on vocals (Armored Saint), Phil Demmel (ex Machine Head, now with Kerry King) on ​​guitar together with Mike Orlando (ex Adrenaline Mob, now in Corey Glover's Sonic Universe), Jack Gibson of Exodus on bass, Jason Bittner (Overkill, Shadows Fall) on drums: these are the aces on the table.
It is not yet known whether this is a one-off project or the beginning of a profitable medium-term path, but the fact is that when you put together names of a certain lineage like these, the fans' attention increases considerably.
Few calculations and intellectualisms, in the eponymous debut of the newborn group: it is a cross between old and new US metal, roots firmly planted in the American power metal of the eighties with a more aggressive cut, fomented and repainted by what is usually understood as modern American metal. Something therefore pressing, compressed, with an unmistakable creak and metallic features, branded by a thrash nature and a moderate desire for contamination.
Orlando's presence allows us to draw a parallel with another release that has seen him as a valid protagonist in recent months, namely the eponymous debut of Sonic Universe. The production cut, tending towards a sparkling hyper-modern aesthetic, is more or less the same, as is the urgency to get to the heart of the matter quickly and not get lost in long preambles.
Orlando's temptation to shred blends well with Demmel's thrash attitude, to design a series of guitar solutions well mediated between groove, feeling and surgical aggression, entrusting the task of giving the coup de grace to the ever-punching vocals of Bush, which alone could transform the most innocuous music in the world into a metallic tornado. We must say that the exuberant personality of the former Anthrax singer, very incisive on syncopated compositions full of tears like those of Category 7 – something he was also very good at in Anthrax, by the way – gives this debut a range of possibilities that other interpreters would not have guaranteed.
The opener “It Stitches”, between wild accelerations, purely Anthraxian swinging progressions and slowdowns between old Machine Head and Pantera, is already a notable calling card, while the following “Land I Used To Love” has melodic openings that easily recall the Armored Saint of the latest albums. Staying on the subject of Bushian Anthrax, the stopped riffing of “Apple Of Discord” is manna from heaven for those who love the albums of that period: solutions that also emerge everywhere and make the individual tracks snappy and unpredictable.
The alternation of angularity and a pinch of softness in the choruses is one of the winning weapons of a work without gaps or interlocutory moments. From the second half of the tracklist we gladly mention the dizzying rush of “Mousetrap” and the incendiary virtuosity of the final “Etter Stormen”, a melodious and shocking instrumental, with a grandeur like that of Machine Head’s “The Blackening”.
Category 7 ultimately sound like a happy meeting of the influences and past experiences of the five names involved, with an appropriate imbalance towards both bands that made John Bush famous. On one side, we have the 360-degree metallic boldness, the feeling and the chameleonism of Armored Saint; on the other, the anthraxian thrash-hardcore rhythms and their magnetic frenzy, with some hopping rhythms calling out loud to the wildest mosh.
Side projects like this rarely leave their mark, but we like to think that Category 7's debut could be a happy exception. There is no useless piling up of egos and pretentious ideas, but rather the real will to detonate their ideas of pure heavy metal, giving the maximum of their respective instrumental and compositional qualities.
We would have preferred a slightly more natural production, especially for the drum sounds, but this is not a defect that affects the overall judgment of the album, which really does everything to win us over and succeeds fully. If you are a follower of the groups mentioned above and this mix of classic and modern sounds is your thing, it is unlikely that you will not like Category 7.