Alex Terrible is not a smart man. He’s admitted that himself in the past, and nourished it to where it’s effectively his whole brand. When he’s not fronting Slaughter To Prevail, he’s either fighting bears, bare-knuckle boxing, or generally embodying the stereotype of a hyper-masculine Russian beef-slab. And as is standard within the life cycle of an ‘alpha-male influencer’, it’s landed him in some hot water. The infamous ‘4 Rules For Real Men’ video saw allegations of homophobia and transphobia levelled, which Terrible brushed off with his preference for “traditional family values”. More scandalous are his black sun tattoos (that have now been covered), and their association with far-right hate groups. Amid all of that, there’s no doubt a ‘nature vs. nurture’ component to consider. Terrible grew up in a rural Russian village with an ex-Navy stepfather who co-founded a military academy—‘inclusive’ and ‘progressive’ aren’t words that spring to mind. There’s also his dual ignorant and edgelord streaks that have always overrode anything striking as true malice. He may be an idiot, but he’s probably not a Nazi.
At the same time, anyone who’d choose to steer clear of Slaughter To Prevail based on any of that can’t really be argued against. It’s the same suite of jock-rock traits that deathcore has put in the work to oust that are rarely (if ever) worth dignifying. There’s also the company that Terrible keeps, namely being one of the only working relationships that Ronnie Radke hasn’t torched to cinders yet. So, yeah, if you want excuses to drag Slaughter To Prevail, regardless of what ‘analysis’ digging through the weeds might reveal, you’re spoiled for choice.
To make an educated guess, they likely revel in every drop of controversy they can get. They seem like the types to, anyway, in an ‘all publicity is good publicity’ vein. And when they look at the numbers, as empirically one of the biggest deathcore bands in the world, it’s probably paying off. The vibe that they give off isn’t dissimilar to prime King 810, where the chest-beating, button-pushing, gorilla-men-make-metal approach is the entire point. Though let’s not get too liberal there, okay? King 810’s thuggery was often framed by a survivor’s awareness of the violence in their Flint hometown. Slaughter To Prevail, meanwhile, see fit to place Conflict’s tough-guy deathcore power fantasy just one song before the anti-war, ‘let’s live in peace’ closer 1984. The forethought isn’t quite forethoughting sometimes.
Perhaps, then, it’s more beneficial to be totally brainless and not think about what you’re consuming on Grizzly. Admittedly, it does make it a bit better. Of the top acts on that cursed Knotfest Mexico lineup (the others being Falling In Reverse and Marilyn Manson, if you wanna know where not to be this December), at least Slaughter To Prevail are defensible to a degree. They’ve got the good baseline of heaviness that you’d want in deathcore, with Evgeny Novikov’s drumming standing out for some machine-gunning brutality when necessary. It’s also hard to deny that Terrible has one hell of a growl on him, arguably enough of a justification alone for Slaughter To Prevail’s current size. Some built-in animus from the shape of the Russian language is a solid amplifier, and for an authoritative, demonic speaking tone like at the start of Behelit—think General Grievous with his voice modulator pitched down to subterranean levels—there’s genuine effectiveness there.
But then you take a step back and you realise that this is basically just Attila if their frontman were a Russian lunatic in a Slipknot / Spawn hybrid mask instead of (as much of) an out-and-out clown. Even on their very worst days, Slaughter To Prevail don’t embarrass themselves as much as Attila, but the point still stands. This is about as cut-and-dry as deathcore thuddery gets, primed to sound a little more sophisticatedly produced—even opulent with the strings on Behelit and Rodina—with a core that’s practically unchanged. With hindsight, it’s just the norm. Kostolom felt great in 2021 when deathcore needed a heavy, slick breakthrough to shake up the scene; revisit it now, and the sensation is barely different to what’s on Grizzly.
Honestly, it just gets a bit tiresome and nondescript after a while. The big, dick-swinging heaviness is where the point begins and ends, ultimately; anything that can worm its way in through that is a bonus. Well, anything that can do that and work, anyway. The closest is Rodina, which sometimes sounds like a Russian Rammstein and therefore lands on perceived viability of a ‘what if…?’ scenario. The same can’t be said for the utterly pointless breaks / ‘skits’ on Banditos and Russian Grizzly In America, for some reason shunted one after another at the album’s very start. Then there’s Imdead and an ever-odious hijacking from Ronnie Radke to morph it into a stillborn Falling In Reverse cut. Worst of all is the utter waste of Babymetal on Song 3, saved from total inconsequentiality by a bright, springy chorus brought from home. Otherwise, they’re there to yip impotently through this cataclysmic mix, and count ‘one, two, three’ in Japanese. Points for a one-of-a-kind Russia / Japan crossover, though, I guess?
By the end of it all, what transpires is likely the exact outcome that Slaughter To Prevail wanted—a big, nominally and physically important album that’ll appeal to the fans, stir the right pots and see streams and success aplenty. You can see why Ronnie Radke likes them so much when that’s his exact M.O., too. But there’s an important difference to consider—if this were him, you’d find an album bled dry from capitulation to a culture war that’s the only source of that loser’s relevance. With Slaughter To Prevail, that’s just not there. They might be dazzled by anti-woke rhetoric, but they’re useful idiots at best. Clearly, more than anything, they want to be manly men and make music that represents that. It’s nothing life-changing or compelling, but it does that job! Again, the ick factor around Slaughter To Prevail is an understandable turn-off, but you soon realise how ineffectual any of that actually is. If nothing else, it’s nice to have one of these that’s ignorable.
For fans of: Lorna Shore, Suicide Silence, Falling In Reverse
‘Grizzly’ by Slaughter To Prevail is released on 18th July on Sumerian Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
Slaughter are fine as is, no need to be so anal with the review of a deathcore masterpiece.