I do love a character…
Just like Burzum & Varg (stabby / arsony / and, well, a bit of a Nazi…maybe) Megadeth & Mustaine (guaranteed to say something bonkers at any moment / likes telling you how good he is at martial arts / ultimately a ginger), Deicide is synonymous with Glen Benton and controversy seems to dog the poor fella. You can never read an article or review without some sort of reference to a bit of squirrel blasting / forehead branding / grumpy ex-guitarists & most recently tour mate Facebook agro. Which is a shame because this is all about the music right? Well it should be, because this a decent death metal album.
I might be in the minority here when I say that my favourite Deicide albums are the three most recent ones. Since 2006’s ‘The Stench Of Redemption’ – the first Deicide album minus the Hoffman brothers on guitars – the band have, in my opinion, created some of their finest music and this, their eleventh studio album, continues this trend.
Kicking off with a cheeky distorted sample from ‘The Dark Knight’ we’re straight into the title track – a mid paced (by Deicide standards) catchy song driven by a simple riff and underpinned by Steve Asheim’s faultless drumming (a highlight throughout the album for me). ‘Thou Begone’ is next up and continues the simple old school vibe that carries on through the eleven tracks on this record. Nothing too fancy going on here just good, solid death metal. In fact it reminded me a bit of ‘Legion’, their second album. Simple & savage. Just how I like it. Third track ‘Godkill’ is definitely gonna be a new pit favourite, some incredible riffing and soloing from Jack Owen and Kevin Quirion with a chorus that my Mrs would describe as ‘well bouncy’.
The production is spot on and everything is clear as a bell adding to the brutality. Lyrically we’re still all about blasphemy and church baiting. No change there then. The biggest change here from previous Deicide records is with Glen’s singing. Gone are the higher pitched layered vocals this time around, this is uniformly gruff and deep death metal growling here which suits the more basic and moody feel to this album….. and there’s now’t wrong with that.
All in all this is a really good, very well played death metal record that deserves it’s place amongst the best of the band’s back catalogue.
Put the personalities to one side, the bloke’s a character and in the current metal world of complicated hair-do’s, guy-liner and interchangeable faceless plastic wannabes that’s gotta be a good thing.
(8.5/10 Mark Eve)
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