Weapons Of Mass Belief - Death Of A Nation (American Blood)
UK release date: 28 November 2005
Rap metal groups often tread a very precarious line. Get it right, and you've got something as incendiary as Rage Against The Machine, get wrong and you can end up sounding like Senser on a very bad day. Frankly, if you get it wrong (and many do), ridicule is nothing more than you deserve - although a good kick squarely in the trousers would probably make everyone else feel a lot better.
Weapons Of Mass belief seem to be getting it right. Death Of A Nation may well be a rap metal track in essence, but there's also a lot more going on too. In many ways, they could well be the lovechild of Sonic Youth did Kool Thing with Chuck D. The guitars are scuzzy; the vocals intelligent, well paced and far from the clumsy rhymes that some bands subject us to.
Even better than Death Of A Nation is B-side The Last Place She Went To Was The Ocean. Leaving the hip hop element behind, WOMB take a huge dollop of the Pixies tune Tame and build towards an almost gothic climax. It's a fine exhibition of their ability to write affecting tunes, and it also proves that they are far from being just another one trick pony rap metal band. This is a band definitely worth keeping an eye on.
