REVERIES...

"Reveries..." is the 4th full-length studio album by French progressive death metal act Supuration. The album was released through Listenable Records in May 2015. "Reveries..." breaks a pretty interesting release cycle that Supuration has maintained on their first three albums, which all had 10 years between them. But since the band's third full-length release "CU3E" was released in 2013, the cycle is now broken.

"Reveries..." is however not an album featuring freshly written material, but instead a release featuring eight re-recorded tracks which in their original form appeared on the 1990 "Official Rehearsal" demo, the 1990 "Sultry Obsession" EP, and the 1991 "Empheral Paradise" single. In addition to the "old" tracks, Supuration has also recorded three covers by Paradise Lost, Twisted Sister, and Anthrax for the 48:10 minutes long album.

The original material is old school death metal with a semi-progressive twist. Relatively intelligible growling vocals placed high in the mix, good rhythmic variation, and overall a fair amount of brutality. A couple of thrashy sections are also featured in the music. Regarding those sections the sound production is a slight problem though, as the palm-muted rhythm guitars sound very thin and muffled. It's too bad because other than on those sections the sound production is relatively well sounding. The semi- progressive tag is mostly a result of the sometimes unconventional song structures, and a few dissonant sounding riffs. Both features Supuration would develop upon on their subsequent releases. This is predominantly old school death metal though.

The three cover tracks are all of a decent quality. "Shattered" by Paradise Lost is delivered very true to the original, which is alright but nothing too exciting. "Among the Living" by Anthrax, is well performed but it's a track that sounds slightly odd with growling vocals. Supuration has picked a perfect Twisted Sister track to cover though, as "The Beast" is delivered with commanding brutality. Maybe it's the relatively slow pace and anthemic nature of the track, which suits Supuration so well, but to my ears it's THE highlight of the album. It's of an equally high quality as when Benediction covered "Forged in Fire" by Anvil.

While the overall quality of the material is relatively high, there are still moments where I'm thinking the original material could have been a bit more memorable. Taking into consideration when these tracks were originally written, they are actually pretty mature, but compared to Supuration's later output, the original material on "Reveries..." doesn't quite hold up. Still a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating isn't all wrong.