Hello and welcome back to the Bandcamp Buried Treasure article series, where I'll be hunting down Buy It Now/Free Download-payment option albums on Bandcamp by the best bands you've never heard! The goal is to introduce you to smaller bands or obscure side-projects you might not have heard of. Anything to expand your musical horizons by just a little bit each week, all while keeping your cost (potentially) down! This week we'll be listening to Arizona's strangely unique blackened death metal-ish-type band Take Over and Destroy!
Take Over and Destroy showed up in our promotional pool, with their most recent record Endless Night, here at Metal Injection and somehow I missed it. I'm still kicking myself for not reviewing it, but now I have the chance for redemption! We'll be looking at the group's 2011 release Rotten Tide, which is equally as good as Endless Night if not a little different and 100% more (kinda) free! Don't say I never do anything nice for you.
Take Over and Destroy, or TOAD, have a really unique sound that they're 2-for-2 on thus far. It's not quite that whole "rot-and-roll" thing where it's basically death metal rock and roll, and it's not quite black metal either. Then there's all the little hardcore and melodic death metal things throw in there coupled with the fact that it really does sound like they're trying to score some really scary-ass movie… which leaves us without a genre! Isn't being anal about classifications fun? It's not a bad thing either- it keeps you on your toes throughout the entire listen, wondering what the hell they'll jump to next. Yet it never really matters what they choose, because you know deep down that's it's going to groove and be catchy as all fuck. For that exact reason, I love Take Over and Destroy. That and the fact that they keep their releases short. Why jam pack an album with shit you don't believe in? I'm not sure if that's the case, but I like to believe it is.
Rotten Tide is an active listen, meaning you're going to want to go somewhere that you can scream or jump around or anything that'll expend energy during your listen. It's music that's roomy and heavy, that has a natural distorted quality that makes you feel like you're taking a front row seat to some fucked-up ritual of sacrifice to summon demons all while avoiding the mosh pit that's going on behind you. Rotten Tide, and Take Over and Destroy in general, are fucking great. Grab both records!
