Like my neighbours, I am fond of sounds that other people might find disgusting and obnoxious, especially when played at 3am when other decent folk are trying to sleep. Rather than plugging my iPod into my bass cab and pumping Throbbing Gristle through it – which apparently counts as torture under the Geneva Convention – my weapon of choice these days is death metal. And happily for these Swedes, their music is better than their punctuation.
After a brief introduction piece, we’re hurtled headfirst into ‘Scorned Messiah’, and we’re in immediately familiar territory: brutal grindcore-style drumming, palm-muted power chord clubbing and lead passages that lodge in the flesh like shattered glass. Of course, I could have just wrote that it sounded like Suffocation, but that would do a great disservice to an album that has such a tight handle on ferocity. For example, ‘The Marked One’ does a splendid job of intertwining blast beats and angular guitar shrieks with glass gargling vocals. As you’d hope, it’s precise enough to mean this blunt trauma has a sharp edge to it. It’s a good sign that when that track stops to sudden silence, your ears are left panting and wanting more of this fix. Which is why it’s such a relief that ‘Obsolete Gods’ kicks into gear and tries to smash down the walls of your house with tireless enthusiasm.
The wheels do slightly come off the wagon on ‘New World Order’ which tries to slow things down a bit, but instead has the aural effect of a sudden stop/go traffic jam during the Bank Holiday rush. It’s a brave attempt, but it tends to stutter and trip over itself until it mercifully fades out. Thankfully, order is restored in the pleasingly titled ‘Smashing The Face Of Belief’ (I’d love to see the single artwork for that one), which boasts a terrific vocal performance: vicious, yet still retaining a discipline that eludes many other metal vocalists, who think it’s enough to frown and grunt like a suspiciously muscular female tennis player.
In the final analysis, if you’re a fan of American death metal, there’s a lot of fun here. It might lack the sharper leads of Morbid Angel, or the sheer quality of aforementioned Suffocation, but it’s an album not without its heavy-handed charms which lifts it up beyond merely workman-like, and into a position where they’ll produce a steady stream of albums and enjoyable support slots. And combating my neighbours when they play Lady bastard Gaga at 4am.
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