Review Summary: One of the best releases in 2018 so far.
This new Deicide album; (“Overtures of Blasphemy,”); is one of the best albums we’ve gotten so far in 2018, and It’s my favorite of the 2018 metal albums, the only ones that could challenge it in my opinion are Satan’s “Cruel Magic” and Skeletonwitch’s “Devouring Radiant Light.” It Also happens to be my favorite Deicide album. Upon giving this album five spins, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is Deicide’s best work since, well ever, as it’s their most solid album, even beating the debut, “Legion” and “Once Upon the Cross”. My previous favorite was “Once Upon the Cross,” but “Overtures of Blasphemy” simply blew it sky high out of first place.
My favorite thing that the band changed, is Glen Benton de(i)cided to not layer high growls and screams over his low growls. I really like that there isn’t two layers of vocals on this new album, because that sort of thing just doesn’t flow well with death metal.The vocals in the track "Seal the Tomb Below," remind me a lot of Corey Taylor from Slipknot.
I really like the guitar tone, and it works even better as most of the songs here are a bit faster than normal Deicide and it reminds me a lot of Skeletonwitch’s tone. The guitar work itself on the album is incredible, riffs are brutal solos are melodic, and there’s a lot of melodic interjections and interplay between in the songs. The drumming is quite enjoyable but on certain tracks like “All That Is Evil,” the drums kind of lay back when the vocals come in and it makes it sound a bit more flat in the mix, and the dynamics suffer.
Now the best part of the album, is that the playing and performance from everyone is absolutely outstanding, the energy, passion, and the drive to be better is what make this album so good. Everyone in the band feels like they’re giving it their all to make a brutal death metal album. But what’s even better, is that the album does not sound monotonous, and that’s why I feel this album is the strongest one the band has released in their entire career, because listening to it doesn’t bore me to the point where I want to find something else to listen to, like some of their other 2000’s material does. The energy coming out of this is unmatched except by “Seven Churches” by Possessed way back in 1985, at least in the realms of death metal.
As much as I’ve talked this album up, now I have to bring down the other boot.
The main thing you’ll notice is that there is a little bit of excessive use of blast beats and tremolo picking, far more than was necessary, but the tremolo picking works better than the blast beats as there’s a second guitar playing another riff or a solo over it so it's less noticeable than the abundance of blast beats. I find the use of tremolo picking and blast beats at the same time irritating, but that's just what I think. (and at first I thought some of the double bass drums were blast beats.) And another drawback is a lack of distinguishable bass on this album, but it’s by no means a lack of bass on the level of Metallica’s “...And Justice For All,” that has garnered a meme status in the metal community. But to come back from that tangent, it isn’t that there’s no bass, it’s just very hard to tell the bass apart from the guitars, but that’s mostly a fault of modern metal in general, as the only bands I’ve heard that have really noticeable bass on their newest release are Overkill and Megadeth, with “The grinding Wheel,” and “Dystopia” respectfully.
Best tracks:
Crawled from the Shadows
Seal the Tomb Below
Anointed in Blood
Destined to Blasphemy
I give this album a 4/5
And I hope that you Deicide that you like it too.
