Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

When the meat on the bone is overflowing with juices, it is hard not to stop yourself from drooling at the prospect of taking a huge bite out of the offering laid out before you; it is the taste that lingers, that catches in the back of the throat and slays anything pretender to the French metal crown in a dog fight to the finish.

Heavy Metal has always had its rebellious side but for a band to immerse itself even deeper into the realms of the genre is unexpected and dripping with cool, especially when it is done with the absolute sincerity of spirit that Stillborn Slave provide in their exceptional 7 Ways To Die.

There may be 7 Ways To Die but there is only one true way to listen anything that begs, insists, and then demands with valour in its stocky, tight ripped heart, to be played and that it with the same ferocious heart, the equal amount of passion that the band play in, so to should the senses go into heightened awareness of what is going on around them. The meaty bone is sensual; it is big, loud and powerful; in the end the only sensible thing to do is roll over and surrender for nothing is going to sound the same for days.

Stillborn Slave really let loose on this extended E.P., the music grabs the listener firmly, shaking any sign of apathy loose and sending it into the unknown quicker than an Olympic Bobsleigh team could ever leave their marks. It is into that unknown that the force of the tracks really does shake the listener’s perception, that their expectation of what went before is crushed and remoulded into a different metal reality.

In the tracks Fiends, Fallen Empire and When Sheep Became Lions, the music pounds like a stampede, a rush of adrenaline cascading through the blood stream and the only way to deal with the feeling is to embrace it, to let go of the unexplained and dive headlong into the world of challenge and change; for in embracing change we grow and spread our own perception further.

7 Ways To Die is a blistering, atomic filled extended E.P., one that is enhanced and sanctified with power; Stillborn Slave have mastered this genre.

Ian D. Hall