Its the time of year when I dig back into some of the years earlier releases. My guidepost being the first wave of best of lists that are coming out the first being Decibel's. I know Erik from his time in Morbid Angel, the band has been around for almost seventeen years, so I am sure I have seen them open for some one at some point in time, but this is my first time really sitting down to give them a proper listen. These guys are not holding back and prove they are just as any of the post- Myspace death metal bands. The inclusion of young drummer Chason Westmoreland, certainly doesn't hurt. Erik Rutan has a mean gurgle that fits here better than Morbid Angel, though he is no doubt a better bass player than Vincent. Darker and dissonant its old Tampa death metal injected with new life. The verse riff also waltzes around under the solo before they return with a more feral attack. Big production , finds all the sounds crisply amplified, leaving nothing buried in the chaos.
"Pathogenic Apathy" is the first song that finds the aggression of death metal becoming slightly monochrome in its sonic dimensions. The beat is a little too straight forward for me and typifying what I did not care for during his tenure in Morbid Angel. The song is a little rushed for the sake of speed. Some of the layered growls work well, but every thing is being thrown at you with little regard for what makes a song a song. The double bass is as punishing in execution as it needs to be, but not sure that saves the song. Putting their best blast forward they lunge into "La Tempestad". The vocals are spat out like bullets, but start to become rather uniform as they refuse to relent for melody. Even the riffs are are starting to become a blur. If you just want a storm of fast death metal then these guys are deftly dealing that out , however here no matter what form of extreme metal you are playing we still want songs not just bull-dozering us.
Thankfully for the title track they slow things down into more of a groove and become much heavier in so doing. There are more Morbid Angel like effects dripped upon his more articulated growl."the Chosen One" is shorter and more straight forward, sure it has a pretty blistering solo , but otherwise doesn't do much more me with the blinding blur it largely relies upon. "Zealot , Crusader of War" starts slightly slower, but doesn't wait to speed back up into a full speed blitz ahead. It does eventually finds a rather Morbid Angel like groove, but I would rather here where they are going than where they have been. "Order of Arcane Scripture" rumbled by me with little effort to regain my attention its not until the groove of "Chaos Theory " that they pull me back in.This might be the album most thoughtfully written song and on top of that its an instrumental , making me wonder what they have been relying on the vocal for in their writing. Not saying I think they should forgo vocals , but they should always make the songs sing and the growls the icing on the cake .
Some interesting sounds are summoned at the onset of "O' Majestic Being, Hear My Call" before they are blasted out of the way for another full frontal assault that does little to distinguish itself from the other such rampages.The guitar solo is the first place where any kind of melody emerges on this one, before the punches come in to take the album out with some double bass. I am a little split because this one , because the execution is dead on and air tight as a coffin, but the songs begin to sound the same at certain points and that is what really makes for a great album for me is it's dynamic range. So I'll round it down to a 7.5 for that reason.
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