You might think I do not cover enough death metal around here. It's not for lack of trying. The problem is I have so many death metal albums sitting in my in-box and 75 percent of them sound the same. They might have slight variations. One might be more blackened. Another might be more thrashy. Most seem to only take their influences for a handful of bands....Morbid Angel, Incantation, Carcass, Cannibal and Death.This German trio stands out from the current crop in this week's inbox. The have a thick sound. Cavernous without losing cohesion. They have chops , but are still aware it's about serving the song. They do fall into the extreme metal rule of impressing with sheer weight of riffage and power of the pounding that I like the first song. Then it is up to the band to hold my attention from this point. Sure the drummer is a beast. He has avoided the very flat straight ahead snare tap that I hate.
The race into "Titan" maintaining all the power they came in with, but not doing a ton to set themselves apart as something memorable.They redeem themselves on "Calls From Below". They find both melody and a unique groove that fakes you out and it doesn't really sound like any of the big death metal five all the other bands seem to worship. They take off at warp speed with "Abysshex" though it doesn't have the same meticulously crafted uniqueness the previous song did, and instead is fairly straight forward death metal of the slightly thrashing brand. The song that follows begins to cause the album to fade into the background as they songs become white nise under the babbling brook of double bass that seldom relents. The guitars dig up a brief melody before blasting into the frenzied blur of "He is the Gate" which has a cool stacatto punch in the bridge. "Seventy Steps" carries this more Ulcerate like churning, as the bellow of chanted vocals haunt the corners of the song.When ths bed captures the right sound they really find themselves onto something in a genre not known for originality.
"Onwards to Kadath" erupts at rapid flood of double bass churning the song forward. The wheel isn't getting reinvented on this one, but it's not a bad song, it plays of many of the sounds that help to set this band apart. "Into the Courts of Azathoth" has a slightly more sonic and catchy riff. The drums take a very deliberate beat behind it until all caution is thrown out of the window and into the whirl wind most of the these songs end up in. The deep tomb grinding riffs that power this thing on do their part as well. These guys make a pretty brutal stab at doing something different I'll give this one a 7.5
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