Horrified "Deus Diabolus Inversus" CD
[Black Lotus]
This Greek death metal band has been around since 1990, but I guess they're not very prolific since this is only their third full-length. I have to say that the first song is a terrible opener, because despite some nice music, the song is really bland and simply repeats the same vocal line over and over for four minutes, after opening with an entire minute of silly trumpet sounds, and the sometimes employed deep, spoken vocals are way cheesy. That song shouldn't even be on the CD, as the disc runs a monstrously long 54 minutes, which is entirely too long. There are a few other such unnecessary tracks, such as the dramatic choral vocals and synths of "Selene's and Endymion's Son", but for the most part their style is groovy modern death metal with lots of melodic lead lines and brooding chord progressions, plus forceful vocal growls that sound like a mix between Entombed and Sepultura (the Max Cavalera era). Some of the music has a doomy sort of Paradise Lost atmosphere to it, but it's definitely rooted in death metal, granted they never really hit on too many speedy passages. Some of the experimental areas have an industrial sort of edge going on, just a smidge, and I'm not too into that either. They should stick to the basics and keep in straightforward, because they're very good at what they do in that regard. If anyone cares, "Avatar of the Age of Horus" features additional vocals by Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt, for like five seconds... The last tack, "Argenteum Astrum", is an excellent acoustic piece backed by synths, flutes, and operatic female vocal tones, and even at 5+ minutes it's an incredibly well executed piece, far more moving and creative than anything else on the CD. Great work there. I really like most of the recording, but the biggest problem isn't the rigid drums tones for once, because those are held in check by the mix. Instead, the biggest issue I have with the sound is that the otherwise superb guitar tone's volume peaks out to slight distortion almost all the time, which is incredibly annoying. But the guitars are thick and textured, perfectly smooth, and the bass tone is great. So everything sounds really dense and powerful except for the drumming, which doesn't bother me so much. The layout's not bad. The band logo stinks and the actual photos of the band, while interesting visually, are totally cheesy, but the artwork itself is quite nice, and the appearance is totally consistent. There are a lot of abstract images and textures collaged together with manipulated photography and such. Not bad at all. The lyrics make little sense to me and aren't very interesting, but that's life. "Bring no pain as one. Millions, total destruction. Kneel you for real. Respect their greed. I'm all man. The queen, the queen is the squadron. Parasite existence of man. Man. Evil precision, engineering of hell..." This is definitely one of those "trim the fat" CD's. Clean up the sound just barely, drop the shitty songs, cut out about a minute or so of filler from the good songs that run for more than five minutes and get tiresome or just have crappy riffs in them, and then you've got yourself a good, solid 35-minute full-length. This isn't so awful at all, but I can't really take 50+ minutes of this in one sitting, especially since there are a lot of weaknesses spread out amongst the high points. (5/10)
Running time - 54:03, Tracks: 13
[Notable tracks: Battle of the Serpents Within, Ascending Path: A Star Child is Born, Argenteum Astrum]
Black Lotus Records - http://www.black-lotus-recs.com

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