Review Summary: Caution users AfterTheBreakdown, Pharoh, etc.: This is what real tech death sounds like, therefore, you'll probably hate it because you suck just as hard as The Faceless.
I'm sure everyone in the metal world, or at least the death metal world, knows that George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher is the lead vocalist in one of the most famous death metal bands of all-time, Cannibal Corpse. What some people may not know is that prior to joining Cannibal Corpse in 1995, Corpsegrinder was the vocalist in a band that he formed in 1990 called Monstrosity. This band takes a little bit of a different approach than Cannibal Corpse, opting to play a more technical style of death metal instead of the brutal style. It could even be said that Monstrosity was one of the first bands to play the actual technical death metal style and this is their first album,
Imperial Doom.
First off, tech death was a whole lot different back in these times than it is today. Today you just have a bunch of bands like The Faceless playing pointless wankery and trying to be the fastest, most technically proficient band in the history of music and to be honest, it's awful. That's not what you get here. Monstrosity don't play sloppily and they know what they're trying to do. While, obviously, some of the riffs, solos, and drumming are way faster and more advanced than some other death metal bands around at this time, Monstrosity pieced them all together with good songwriting, not just throwing a bunch of random riffs together and recording them. In essence,
Imperial Doom still sounds like exactly what it is, an old-school death metal album that was ahead of it's time and helped develop the technical death metal scene and pave the way for all of the bands today, as horrible as a lot of them may be. As for the vocals by Corpsegrinder, they're a little less intense as they are nowadays, considering he was just starting out and trying to find his style. They're not really as guttural and are a little bit more of a shout/growl mixture. Either way, they sound good, so that's all that really matters.
Basically, if you're a fan of the early (REAL) technical death metal bands such as Cryptopsy, Suffocation, Gorguts, Demilich, and others of that nature, then chances are you'll really like Monstrosity. Don't let the term "tech death" scare you off because of all the ***ty bands that take that genre tag today. Believe me, I'm sure Monstrosity are just as ashamed of them as we all are.
