THE EROSION OF SANITY

First of all, I must say that any album cover by Dan Seagrave deserves attention. A master of creating these very ominous and bizarre landscapes, his work here is another in which I imagine myself being placed into. For a short period of time I'd think "Wow, what an incredible experience, this place is so unreal!", Soon after I'd follow that up with "I really need to get the hell out of here since this is not the sort of place a guy like me should be hanging around in AT ALL." This album cover does look like the sort of locale where an erosion of sanity would occur quite quickly.

As a death metal effort, this album to me comes across as being particularly front-loaded. The first track has the most memorable riffs and the second track has the looniest and most inventive musicianship, both tunes tied together by a pretty little haunting piano interlude. Really good stuff early on. Then, as the album lurches on from track to track, the songs seem derivative variations of the first two tracks, although some are fairly decent in their own right. There's even a short acoustic guitar break towards the album's end to break up the monotony for a spell. Outside of that, the last half of this album is a mystery in that no matter how often I've played this thing I can't remember how any of those songs go riff-wise or whatnot.

Musically the band is more than efficient, with stellar guitar playing leading the way. Vocals are tortured death growls that thankfully retain a bit of rage and despair, avoiding robotic gutterals for a more violent mid-ranged delivery. The lyrics spouted by that aural display are noteworthy as well, combining violent and gory imagery with grim yet thought provoking ideas rather than tired odes to how murdering people and devouring their brains is a good time for all (what one might have expected from a band with a name like "Gorguts").

The Erosion Of Sanity is pretty much an old-school technical death metal album that, while well played, didn't really blow my mind when it came out, nor does it now despite the reputation as a classic it eventually garnered years after its release. The first two songs alone make this album worth a listen, but as a whole The Erosion Of Sanity proceeds to get tiresome after awhile. Riffs and atonal melodies are tossed into each track like a death metal salad to the point where structure devolves into a bunch of progressions joined together for a length of time between four and five minutes. The later tracks do have interesting bits and individually can work frightening wonders on an mp3 player's shuffle, but a couple more interludes would have been a smart idea in this particular album's case.