SEGRESSION: Never Dead

Produced by Chris Rand
Released: April 2011

When Segression slipped off the radar almost a decade ago they were still at the top of their game. While their self-titled album had come in for some pretty heavy criticism, they were still touring strongly and remained highly popular. Like the sorely-missed Alchemist (what is the story there?), they just sort of stopped. Perhaps because they never came to an inglorious and ignominious end like so many others, when they returned last year to tour with Fozzy there were as many people there to see them as there was for the headliner. Since then anticipation has been high for the release of this new album. At least one review has already called it the best Australian metal album ever, and while I'm not about to go that far, it is certainly not a disappointment for those Segression fans who've been waiting nine years for a new release.


Never Dead is by far the most diverse and consistent album this band has yet made. Unlike previous albums, which occasionally steered a course rather too close to their influences, on Never Dead Segression answers to no one. Really, this doesn't sound much like any other band that's around at the moment. More than anything they've done before, Segression defines what they are with this release. It still bears the band's hallmarks and the distinctive riffing style, the squeal of pinch harmonics and Chris Rand's idiosyncratic vocal delivery will definitely please the fans.

One of the major criticisms levelled at Segression in the past was their stylistic shift from the aggressive Machine Head-style thrash bristling with guitar solos to the chugging, breakdown-laden style of later on. On Never Dead the band has embraced both aspects of their past and turned them into a cohesive whole. The riff-heavy "Blood Lace Black Day" takes the lead strongly and is it apparent that soloing is very much a part of Segression’s oeuvre once more. Timely injections of lead guitar serve to add an element of venom to Segression's already spiteful sound in tracks like "The Wishing Well", "Gaspipe" (that hearkens back to the L.I.A. days) and the epic and heavy "L.T.P.C.". Later, in "Let Me Be Me" Rand drops some hard rhyming over the extended breakdown on a track that recalls the Smile album. Then out of nowhere they thrown in a complete surprise, slipping in the two-part, Zakk Wylde-like "Reality Playroom" that sounds like nothing they've ever done before and on the infectious "Candleneck" they hit on something that stands apart from most of the metal currently circulating.

Never Dead isn’t just a comeback. It’s more like a mission statement, and that mission is to play what they play on their own terms, just like before. Old fans, take note: Segression is back. New fans, take the same note.

1. Blood Lace Black Day
2. Never Dead
3. Hero Anthem
4. The Wishing Well
5. Gaspipe
6. Reality Playground Pt. 1
7. Reality Playground Pt. 2
8. L.T.P.C.
9. Let Me Be Me
10. Candleneck
11. Shattering of a Dream
12. Misery

Rating: 85%

SEGRESSION: Segression

Released: 2002

Segression was a band that I unashamedly championed for quite a few years, from the time I saw them (when they were still known as Eezee) playing to a couple of dozen people in a Liverpool pizza bar. They managed to piss off as many people as they pleased, but at the time of this album, they were one of only a handful of Australian metal bands to have made it to their fourth album and it only took them six years to do it.

After a failed relationship with a label, a few months in the US and replacing yet another drummer, Segression offered this self-titled release as their fourth issue, this time on their own label. There had been some talk among the band about bringing the heaviness back for this album, which was seen by some as an admission that maybe they’d left it behind somewhere along the way and ‘Dragon Mouth Splitter’ starts Segression off on the right foot with a feel and execution that hearkened back to their thrashier early days. After this however the band moves into the nu-metal territory they’d been in since the Fifth of the Fifth album, a style they helped pioneered in this country.

Chris Rand tries out a few different vocal guises across the CD, from a whispery spoken-word approach to his raspy half-shouts and occasional scream and new boy Keith Owen does some nifty work behind the kit. There's also no denying that Segression had lost not a jot of their aggression and rage over the years, as 'Conspire' and 'Segregated Aggresion' – probably the best song on the album – in particular prove. But most of the tracks suffer from a real dearth of variation in the riff department, with the guitars churning out the same chugga-chugga motif over and over again. On past albums Segression had shown that they could put together a riff vicious enough to strip flesh from the bone, so it was hard to figure out exactly what they were thinking here. The unaccountably muddy guitar mix doesn't help matters either. The acoustic ballad is something that they should have perhaps left alone too: they set out to prove they could show other emotions besides anger, but Rand doesn’t quite have the voice to carry it off.

Ultimately Segression was a disappointing note for the band to go out on, and had they continued may have been a hard one to recover from.

1. Dragon Mouth Splitter
2. Lips of Sorrow
3. No One
4. Poison Pen
5. Segregated Aggression
6. What I Would Give
7. Conspire
8. Spoonbled
9. Body
10. You Want Me to Die

Rating: 40%