SPIRITUAL HEALING

A few months ago I was quite surprised to see a number of Death reviews making their appearance on the PA home page. Although I have the odd death-metal album in my collection, I had never checked out Death as I assumed they were over-hyped. Well, that's my natural disposition I'm afraid. However, when they made their appearance on PA I suspected I might have missed something after all.

Indeed, when it comes to death metal, this is exactly my kind of thing: good musicianship, not only brutal but also clever, not just aggressive but affecting as well, full of real pain and extreme anxiety pouring out of freshly dug wounds. Oh yes I'm getting in the mood here! As with most extreme metal, I enjoy the music rather easily, but whether a band will captivate me or not largely depends on the vocals. Luckily those are very strong here, exactly that very mournful gruff wail that I like so much. Pretty similar to Obituary I would say.

As a death metal album this is pretty much as good as they come, but it hardly registers on my proggo-meter. The compositions and arrangements are straightforward slow-fast death metal thrash, with the guitars as the most accomplished element but without doing anything innovative. The drums are generic metal beating and I've yet to discover any bass.

Being a novice to Death, I'm not sure yet where exactly to place this album in their musical development, but it sure is a solid album in its style.