By: Anders

Posted: Sep 28, 2005

I was quite surprised when I laid ears upon this new release from the American death metal mongers Vile. It didn't remind me a lot about Vile, well of course it did as such, but the music on this album is much more diverse than I remember the older material were, and the band has started to incorporate many good black metal melodies into the brutal death metal universe of theirs.

The bottom is solid death metal, good riffs ripping up old wounds, mid-paced to blasting drumming, at other times a more percussion like style as in the track 'The Burning Shrines', where we also get a couple of nice guitar solos, and some ripping bassplay. When talking about the bass, it's always audible in the sound picture, it has gotten a nice place in the mix and it is enjoyable to listen to most of the time, some good lines that gets fired towards us, it is delivered by Jack Gibson from Exodus, and he knows what it is about. The bass together with the drums lays a good backbone for the guitar extravaganza, and the slaying growl. Mostly a deep growl, evil as hell, at other times an ear piercing growled black metal scream. The many breaks involved in the music all along the way can be a bit disturbing once in a while, and keeps the momentum down, a bit of a shame.

I guess that Vile with this album moves from death metal into the war metal genre. That's a theme the lyrics seem to rotate about, and with the mix of brutal death and more melodic and slaying black metal elements, that "box" would be more suiting. There are some impressive guitar work on this album, killer bass, a great production that really gives a lot of room to the great sounding bass, it is really deserved that it gets the room it does, because it does sound good. The vocals are good and fitting as well. I'm sure this album will gain a good crowd of supporters for Vile, it is for sure a good one Colin Davis and the boys have made this time.

Rating: 7½/10

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