Catatonic Society-Baptistina

End Times Records
2015

Issued back in March of this year, "Baptistina" is the latest offering from the heavy metal trio known as Catatonic Society. Serving as the group's long-anticipated debut album, "Baptistina" was recorded at Sharkbite Studios in the band's hometown of Oakland, California and it finds the line-up of Jay Dickinson  (guitars, vocals), Kenny Onesko (drums), and Sergiy Trushel (bass) in fine form. This full-length follows in the footsteps of the previously-released single, "Mandrake" as well as the band's first studio outing, 2014's "Demo-nology". In addition to the riff-heavy "Mandrake" and the four equally thrashtastic tracks off of "Demo-nology" ("Left Hand Path", "Lost at Sea", "Baptistina" and "Ashes") the band's new album has hard hitting cuts like "Gravity", "Solomon's Temple", "Lazarus Frankenstein", "Last Stand", and "Shiva the Destroyer". With a run-time that is over fifty five minutes (!), "Baptistina" finds Catatonic Society moving beyond the self-imposed limits of the 2014 demo with all of the various tracks working better in this context. Initially sold to me as "High on Fire meets (some) Mastodon, meets purely old school....with hooks", "Baptistina" is as much that (fairly-accurate) description as it is a great example of how well modern metal can work when you have actual musicians with talent and a knack for songwriting at the helm! With a run-time that is over fifty five minutes (!), "Baptistina" is a real treat to the senses in addition to being one of those cool albums where you will want to give it a few spins in order to pick up on all of it's subtle nuances. If only more heavy metal/modern metal bands put this amount of effort into their craft....