The immense God Dethroned are back and this time with their twelfth full length release, and it is a beast.
‘The Judas Paradox’ opens with its namesake and title track, the marathon of the album and a horde of melodies and atmosphere. The solos from the fretboard of Meester are entrancing while the vocals from Sattler are as ever commanding and guttural from the off. The bassline and drum score that sits behind the action of the thinner strings are muscular and majestic throughout and the intrinsic brutality which the vocals are dispatched with sets the intentions out from the very start of the release.
The album continues in the same style throughout, the first single from the album ‘Rat Kingdom’ is a majestic and flowing soundscape of epic proportions, the drums build with a regimented and marching hypnotic soul while ‘Black Heart’ is an eerie and hypnotic intro to the following ‘Asmodeus’ which unleashes vocals with a more gravelly core and venomous purpose. The melodies in ‘Asmodeus’ are beautiful and atmospherically decadent while the vocals are as raw and caustic as is the God Dethroned trademark.
My personal favourite track on the album is the absolutely unrelenting and brutal ‘Hubris Anorexia’, which is out and out Death Metal with a Black Metal tinge and undercurrent to its being. The Make up of the track consists of guttural vocals which sit on top of melodic and beautiful soundscapes of guitar solos and riffs while the drums beat out the essence of the track in a barbaric and detonating style.
Closing out the album is ‘War Machine’ which is a ruthless and violent exhibition of how violent and callous Death Metal can combine with fragments of melodious exquisiteness. The vocals are delivered with a diction which is addictive, and the guitars once again create solos which sit perfectly within the corrosive and corroding Death beats and riffs.
These tracks, along with their album siblings, all combine in perfect unison to spawn and create a Death Metal product which encompasses some splinters of Black Metal in order to deliver an artefact which needs to be housed within your collection without delay.
Yet again the Dutch Death Metal masters have well and truly delivered in style. Strap yourselves in and brace yourselves, this is one for your neck to be well and truly thrashed to.
(8.5/10 Phil Pountney)
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