For me, with this album, Vorkreist have completely lost it. With ‘it’ I mean the vibe of it all, what made them stand-out, what made them interesting. The black metal aggression has been replaced with a polished modern death metal sound, whilst vocal (patterns) are more reminiscent to the adolescent ‘that’s so cool, man’-Dimmu Borgir regions. Throw in technically impressive yet boring-as-hell chugga-chugga guitar playing, groove-overdose-galore and proggy sections that are so incredibly trendy it’d make Dalstoners cry blood… oh dear. How on earth do members of such profound and awesome acts as Blacklodge, Secrets of the Moon, Antaeus and Hell Militia create such an album… it is beyond me. Especially the title-track Maledicte is the epitome of all what’s wrong here (it’s on YouTube, check it out).
Ok, now that I’ve got that out of my system, let us talk about what’s genuinely good about this record. The above-mentioned musicianship is of course always wonderful candy for the lovers of the technical; everything’s tight as a ‘70s phone-box. There are also plenty of riffs to go round, probably more catchy-stuff than ever before, actually. All in all, catchiness rules supreme. Choruses, solos, leads, drumming…damn, it’s so solid… so polished. Great, if you like that sort of thing.
My sincere apologies if you find this review to be harsh, but to me this sounds like an attempt to move further into major label territory and I simply cannot accept that. It makes me feel nothing – no anger, no fear, no disgust – nothing. I can understand that a band wants/needs to evolve at all times, but this is essentially the step when it’s time for the underground to jump off the wagon and make space for the massive waves of potential customers from the German mainstream.
(3.5/10 Miika Virtanen)
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