By: Anders

Posted: Jun 22, 2006

This is my first encounter with this French death metal outfit, and their second full length album. The band counts a couple of members from the semi-legendary French death metal band Mutilated, which haunted the scene in the late 80ties and early 90ties, namely one of the guitarists and the drummer. As an odd thing "Maât" is a concept album, built up around quantum physics, not a subject many death metal bands touches. A quantum is the smallest amount of a physically quantity that can exist alone, so we are talking advanced physics here.

Musically the band is quite advanced as well, as the death metal they deliver on "Maât" is very technical and diverse. The base is in heavy and brutal as fuck death metal, heavy, though fast and grinding riffs are getting churned out of the guitars. On top of that we get many leads, melodic, wicked, totally off beat and disharmonic. Below the guitars we have the drums going crazy, damn Guillaume behind the kit has some chops. Always changing pace, kick drum blows, a blasting snare drum and various fills and a good use of the cymbals, without overdoing the cymbal work, killer work. People not into technical, fast and ever changing death metal, might get quite scared of his performance. Somewhere in between it all, the bass struggles to keep up with the drumming, following the drumming, more or less strike by strike, it must have been a tough job keeping up with the frantic always shifting rhythm patterns, but a good job. The vocals, a guttural and fierce growl, fit the music quite well, it is not as interesting as the music, far from, but a good match and not overpowering the musical talent the band possesses.

The band has been a trip to Italy to record and get the album produced, they have utilized the talents of Luca Minieri, and that seems to be a wise choice, as he has given the band a good production. As fast and technical music as the music Act Of Gods deliver often tend to drown and mud up in a weak or too heavy and dark production, but Luca has found the right balance and that really suits the final outcome.

"Maât" is only speaking to death metal freaks of the extreme kind, the music is brutal, but even more technical and wicked, and that takes a good pair of ears to decipher and a good amount of spins, before one gets the full potential of the album. Though when the album has received the right amount of spins, a great and interesting album unveils, an album you won't grow tired of all of a sudden. And on top of Act Of Gods' own madness, they have thrown in a well executed cover of Terrorizer's 'After World Obliteration', that is always a good move!

Rating: 8/10

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