I guess death metal comes in all shapes and sizes now, from brutal old school through slamming to whatever technoflash some guitarist has come up with recently. Well Denmark’s Deiquisitor offer a nightmarish black and white cover which hints at old school leanings. The band themselves are veterans of the death metal scene too so…..?

Hmm. Well ‘Atom Synthesis’ drops in immediately with a choppy riff that is surprisingly clean. Not technical you understand but compared to some of the muck i listen to still surprisingly clean. Vocals are along the Bolt Thrower spectrum but with all due respect the Deiquisitor not really a star of the show being pretty unvaried throughout the album. It’s an OK opener but more gives you an idea of what might be to come rather than grabbing you by the throat. The title track up next is better;  it has a nice malevolence about it, rhythm and pace mixing it up and almost adding a bit of a groove section in there that reminds me of a far less crusty Winds Of Genocide.

‘Faint Distorted Images’ is a good place for my brain to start analysing stuff. It has the first squealing guitar break but in the whole picks riffs broken into chunks, repeats a few times then moved to the next one. What this tells my ears is that these guys know their death metal backwards and forwards and really know what they are about as musicians. Problem I get around here and ‘Tetrad Of Lunar Eclipses’ is that it’s only elements of the songs that hold my nose to the riff.

The production seem a fine for me, if maybe a touch subdued, perhaps smoothing out the highs and lows too much? Or maybe that’s more the song construction itself. Yes, there is a little bit of a crusty feel here and there, keeping the sound well away from the technical, but on the whole the same general pace drives the entire album and with not so much shading to the vocals and songs often split down into this repeated riff segments what we end up with is a highly competent but for me only mildly compelling slab of death metal.

Maybe it’s not filthy enough for me, who knows? If you fancy some meat and potatoes, solid death metal though you could do a lot worse than Deiquisitor. I’ll pass though, sorry.

(6/10 Gizmo)

https://www.facebook.com/Deiquisitor

https://deiquisitor.bandcamp.com/album/downfall-of-the-apostates-digi-promo