Deus`Godless’ is the second, filth-covered, nasty, crusty old-school, death metal album from these surprisingly fresh faced and modern looking Danes. This eight-track opus has `old’ written all over it. The production is so authentic you can almost hear the dust on it – waves of mid-range, crunchy guitars, drenched in gloomy atmosphere, a healthy dose of reverb and a lack of blast beats in some crazy time signature, just to name a few things.

There is a fusion here of gnarly thrash, and a hint here and there of black metal too, which does indeed add an even blacker, grimmer layer to the grisly music. At times, the band really succeed in creating the perfect grim, old-school, obscure vibe of the old bands. There are occasional hints of Celtic Frost, Mayhem, even early Satyricon; every now and then, Deus Otiosus really hit the spot with some fine, heavy, dark, atmospheric riffing which drags your mind into the dark, unpleasant places that ancient death metal used to (assuming you are of a certain age!)

However, this album is neither a perfect tribute to `the old school’ nor a classic in its own right. All the right noises are made, the production is crusty and grim, and there are thrashing, head-banging beats aplenty. Yet, something is lacking here. Mostly, there seems to be a serious lack of dynamics in most of the songs. All the songs are quite long by most metal bands standards (apart from Opeth), and each song begins and ends in the same tempo. While this can be enjoyable over two and a half minutes, a song of around five minutes with no dynamics doesn’t do too much to keep your attention. On a first listen, I loved the old school vibe of the album, but way too often I found my attention wandering (even to the point of stacking the dishwasher rather than listening to the album). It is clear that the band have some great riff ideas, and really know how to create a dark, sinister atmosphere, yet their song writing lets them down in my opinion. Hopefully, their next release will be a little bit more musically creative, and then people will see the real talent that lies with Deus Otiosus.

(6.5/10 Jon Butlin)

www.deus-otiosus.com