Review Summary: Some regressions in the nuances of the instrumentation and a weak start leave God Ends Here feeling less memorable than its predecessor, but it remains a competent and sufficiently pulverising death metal album for most fans.
Sweden's Aeon probably has the most textbook death metal sound out there. Fusing the slight technical edge of
Cannibal Corpse with a bit of
Behemoth's grandiosity and lyrics that near-enough parody
Deicide, the band managed to stand out on the back of hooky songs, meaty production and a lack of the usual death metal aloofness. 2012's
Aeons Black in many ways seemed like the crystallisation of their efforts, with a collection of many (probably too many) strong, aggressive, and pretty diverse death metal songs that landed it as one of the best modern death metal albums of that year. A conspicuous 9 year absence has finally been broken by God Ends Here, and seemingly very little has changed.
Most of the core ingredients on display and the songwriting have barely changed. The riffs hit a satisfying middle ground between twisty single-note runs and chunky, rapid chord changes; the vocals are powerful and low as they spit out some of the worst death metal lyrics ever (as is tradition with this band); the bass exists, I suppose; and the drums... ... aren't quite as good as they used to be. The change in drummers between the two albums has resulted in a slightly less considered performance from Janne Jaloma (formerly of
Bloodshot Dawn), with a tendency to lean too hard into blast beats at the wrong moments and less of a tight groove with the guitars. All in all it's a serviceable performance and better than a lot of death metal, but the nuances of Arttu Malkki's balanced playing on their previous album are lost.
Much like Aeons Black, God Ends Here has a somewhat overlong tracklist, interspersed with some uninteresting filler instrumentals, and sadly they are not as varied as before, with no interesting reinterpretations on classical musical motifs like
Neptune the Mystic. Unlike that album, the tracklist is somewhat back-heavy, with a series of pretty samey Deicide-lite tracks opening the album, all of which are decent individually, but run together. Things take a while to pick up with
Deny Them Eternity, a fun and aggressive
Bloodthirst-era CC type track with plenty of catchy trills and some nice mid-paced grooves that are a welcome departure from the death-thrash styles of the preceding tracks. Following that track, the album starts to fit together a lot better -
Forsaker is agreeably short and aggressive, and the band thereafter rediscovers a bit more of the variety that was absent earlier of.
The title track is one of the band's best to this point, a stately, heavy and fairly transparently Behemoth-influenced juggernaut with some minor symphonic and black metal elements. Whilst the somewhat bland drum performance lets it down a bit, the track is still one of the few points where the band manage to capture the varied pace of their best work on Aeons Black. Thereafter, a lot of the autopiloted feeling of the tracks disappears, and whilst tracks like
Severed and
Despise the Cross lack memorability, they are at least functionally distinct and better executed than the weak run of tracks that kicks off the album. It is still somewhat disappointing to not really have any tracks that capture the oppressive, monolithic weight of tracks like the title track from the last album, and there is a shortage of hooky riffs, but the back half of the album is actively enjoyable in its own right.
A forgettable tracklist sadly leaves God Ends Here as a strictly worse version of Aeons Black, with fewer standout tracks and less nuanced drumming. That being said, there is no shortage of great riffs and well executed songwriting, so if you want a fix of straight-ahead death metal, this will do the job.
