Getting a full CD so I can see the imagery and lyrics doesn’t occur very often for us reviewers and for this one I get the full gore soaked cover of a couple of geezers doing guess what, yep disembowelling a swine in the form of what looks like a police/judge/lawyer. The title track opens this and after the chaotic start the song adopts a groove laden beat with massive double bass and colossal bass work. Vocally I was reminded of Jason Blachowicz ‘s deep drawling down tuned bellow. The emphasis for this band is purely devastating groove without using breakdowns ever. There are touches of Deicide on the vocal delivery and surprisingly you can actually understand what the guy is saying for the most part, just like Benton does. “She’s Best Kept Headless” is bone crunching in depth as the bass seems to threaten the very substance of your skeleton such is its density on speakers or headphones as I found out. The gravity blast, however, does not work at all on this song.
A nice drum solo starts “A Massacre Of Mormons” (I wonder what this is about) as this song veers very close to deathcore with a bounce approach and a good lead break half way in. As with many albums in the goregrind or gore death genres it is far too easy to become bored by the repetitive deluge usually undertaken but thankfully ROV have sufficient skill and technical flair to enhance each song with clever leads and plenty of instrumentation instead of one dimensional blur work outs. Reading the lyrics to the songs, each one has a horror movie like style to it, the opening scene setting, the carnage in the middle and the aftermath. There are few samples used on the songs as opposed to bands like Mortician who use them all the time. The band prefers to act out the songs themselves with varying vocal styles.
“The Unwanted Intruders” and “He Hates His Fucking Job, … blah blah” blend almost into one song with the former being a guttural crushing tune that eventually morphs into the latter tune with a half blast that again veers close to deathcore. The strange start to “A Tradition Of Bloodshed” is surreal before unfolding into tons of double bass and blasts. The blasting continues into “As Seen On T.V.” which again has Malevolent Creation overtones such is the catchy style before finishing with the gore drenching “It Shouldn’t Have Been Found, It Shouldn’t Have Been Written”. A supremely catchy tune like death metal should be as the song possesses the only real sample as a news reader gives all the gory details. There is enough technical prowess on this album to engage purist death metallers but also plenty of gutsy gnarliness (I made that word up) to satisfy brutal death metallers with an affliction for Waco Jesus, Mastic Scum, Six Feet Under, Deicide, Malevolent Creation, get the picture now.
http://www.myspace.com/reignofvengeance
Martin Harris.
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