Poland strikes back this year: Behemoth with the majestic and blackened “The Satanist”, Vader with the crushing masterpiece “Tibi Et Igni” and of course the most technical band (after the absolutely sick Yattering that is) ever to come out of Poland: Decapitated! After four acclaimed great tech-Death metal albums “Winds Of Creation” (1997), “Nihility” (2001), “The Negation” (2004), “Organic Hallucinosis” (2006), where you could see them slowly adding groovier elements into their sound, they faced the biggest blow. One of the key members to their career, an amazingly talented drummer called Vitek died on a tour bus crash. His brother Vogg refused to quit making music and went on to find new members and after 5 years of silence he brought “Carnival Is Forever” (2011) to the world showing a brand of groovy technical Death metal that sparked some controversy among their fans. Yet as proven by the last 2 visits of Decapitated in Greece, they really seemed to be monstrous on stage!
Their new album “Blood Mantra” starts with “Exiled In Flesh” ripping old school Death metal style with the modern elements that the band got us used to, closing with an acoustic intro. There are many surprising twists and turns like that in this record. “The Blasphemous Psalm to the Dummy God Creation” follows to rip our necks apart from windmill headbanging, small and absolutely. Groove takes control with the next song “Veins” speeding a bit, but mostly is a midtempo neckbreaker with a sort of atmospheric touch to it. Up next the title track to keep up the groove and add some speed here and there, especially that Death/grind outburst on the four minute mark.
“Nest” is a full-on groovy death metal track reminding even a bit of Machine Head/Meshuggah with a nice atmospheric break in the middle. What follows is a technical fast paced intro on “Instinct” with a great intro riff that turns into a death metal tornado with great soloing in and more groove for our headbanging pleasure and some experimental passages only to come back to the intro riff to end the song. “Blindness” has a mesmerizing groovy intro with an eerie melody over groovy riffage in the background and goes like that for the rest of the song with one of the most haunting solos of the whole record. Followed by “Red Sun” another mesmerizing instrumental showing the bands variety in songwriting. That eerie atmosphere continues with the intro of “Moth Defect” which then kicks in with powerful distorted guitars, and right into some Morbid Angel influenced technical riffage and overall a sickened track with some industrial touches here and there to spice up the mix.
A great and diverse record for Decapitated, showing that this band is capable of not only making death metal tornados that will kick your ass in the pit, but also creating an atmosphere a modern Death metal record should have. Horns up!
[page_title text=”FEATURED SONG”]