Artist: Diabolic
Title: Excisions of Exorcisms
Type: Album
Label: Deathgasm Records

Tampa Florida Death Metal contemporaries Diabolic have not released a full length album since 2003’s great ‘Infinity Through Purification,’ give or take a couple of EP’s and re-issues. The band broke up in 2004 and reformed in 2006. This album rams you in the face from the first track, namely ‘Excisions of Exorcisms’ and a latter track of pure excellence in ‘Venomous Habitations’. This causes you to have a swirling mass of hair and go for it like no-one’s business. Yes it is death metal, and yes it is really intense. If you like your music like Immolation or faster elements of Malevolent Creation, this is for you. Their recent jaunt around the States with Cannibal Corpse will have done them no harm either, a perfect captive audience. In the grand scheme of things, there are hundreds of bands honing this style and creating albums around the world, Diabolic differ because amongst this chaos is a strong principle of song writing and flowing arrangements. It is certainly not your usual boring grunt-a-thon. Vocally, bassist Paul Ouellete has a clear set of pipes, spitting furiously at the lyrical lawless society with Satan coming out of the box again.

The lead work is frantic and technically excellent Jeff Parrish and Kelly McLauchlin do a fine job made more pleasurable by the albums slick production quality. ‘False Belief’ takes the album to its first respite and slows it down to almost a crawl in death metal terms. The guitar takes some form of harmonising with oneself and still provides much typical Tampa Florida styling, with double bass drumming akin to early 1990’s classics, as is the cool artwork courtesy of Joe Petagno.

‘Entombed’ and ‘Fragmented Kreation’ complete this album well; there is no need for the monk chanting keyboard track of ‘Infernal Darkness’. That aside, Diabolic for me have not released a bum album. ‘Excisions of Exorcisms’ is certainly no slouch; it’s fast, brutal, heavy, and old school. Death metal purists could take this one either way, but I think this is a great release, but not quite at the outstanding stage. Diabolic play US Death metal that is fast and furious with arrangements that stand the test of time.

http://www.myspace.com/diabolic666
http://www.deathgasm.com/