Circle of Dead Children - Starving The Vultures (1999)

Country: U.S.A.
Genre: Grindcore, Deathgrind
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© 1999 Willowtip
Review by Éric Durant for Best Black Metal.wordpress.com
Starving the Vultures is the first album by the deathgrind/goregrind band Circle of Dead Children and has many black metal references, reminiscent of the band Von.
Starving the Vultures is one of these albums that stands out both by being brutal and in your face as death metal should be, while managing at the same time to create an intimate feeling of minimalistic and atmospheric misanthropy.
Being the first album ever releashed by the band Circle of Dead Children we can understand how it would be so easily overlooked, yet this album is at the same time the beginning and culmination of heavy atmospheric metal such as the music played by bands like Von Goat.
Starving the Vultures is mostly and underrated yet not unpopular masterpiece in the heavy metal scene.
First and foremost, Starving the Vultures is a pioneer work of art considering that the album was released in 1999 back when the atmospheric genre was virtually non-existent.
You can listen to as many recent “atmospheric” metal records as you want, none convey the same message and the same emotions as Starving the Vultures.
Secondly, unlike most modern black metal Starving the Vultures doesn’t try to sound “evil” or dark. Instead of relying on sound mastering, polishing and production, Starving the Vultures focuses on the music and more importantly the message that the music conveys, which I believe should be the purpose of every album.
Starving the Vultures was created to contradict the modern metal trend, in which appearances prime over musical meaning. In the modern metal trend people began listening to extreme metal music just to go with the flow, dress up and sound “dark”. In opposition to this trend,  Starving the Vultures is a distorted, obscure, and yet melancholic ballad portraying everything extreme metal should be.
While most black metal bands try to sound evil with raspy and distorted vocals, on the album Starving the Vultures every instrument personifies raw hate.
The guitars overall are raspy and destructive, interacting in a chaotic, distorted yet clean way.
The songs Return to Water, Doom Farmer and Heidi’s Arrow produce a particular minimalist and eerie feeling that contrasts with the brutality of the tracks.
Summarizing this review, Starving the Vultures is a close as you can get to perfect atmospheric yet brutal deathgrind. In essence, you don’t know raw and distorted until you have listened to Starving the Vultures.
Starving the Vultures final score : 96 / 100

tags: circle of dead children, starving the vultures, 1999, flac,