Raised Fist
“Sound of the Republic”
Burning Heart

Check out Raised Fist on this week’s Radio Bungalo>>>

Ever wanted to know what it feels like to be slapped in the face with a cinder block? Come on, just for shits and giggles? Well Burning Heart Records took the heavy lifting out of a beating by hoisting the entire brick into a half hour CD teeming with unrelenting brutality—Nothing about this band is tame or easy on the ears.

Hailing from some far out Scandinavian county, Raised Fist take your traditional hardcore and thrash metal style and triple the speed of the guitars, jack up the drums to near-demonic speeds, and wrap it all around Alexander Rajkovic’s unrelenting vocal attack.

And you know what the funny part is? This record is way more accessible than their last release. Here we find the band really fleshing out some relatively understandable lyrics, spewed in an almost rap-style delivery that recalls Downset, Most of the times Rajkovic just shouts in a massive staccato roar that never strays into screaming.

The music is so compressed that it sounds like the band consists of one instrument—a jackhammer. The closest thing to melody can be found on tracks like “Perfectly Broken” and “Some of these Times” when the band actually pauses so the singer can do his thing. There also are occasional sweet guitar nuances that are audible if you pay close attention, but most of the time the listener is dodging the riffs pounding into his brain.

If Slayer were Swedish they would be called Raised Fist.