9. deicide - 'the stench of redemption'
If you read me going on about it at the time, you know I was pretty excited when this came out, and I had good reasons to. Deicide had been for so many years a frustrating band, churning out okay records when you knew they had it in them to do so much more. The Hoffman brothers, talented guitarists as they are, were settled in an uncomfortable animosity with mainman Glen Benton, which obviously did not do wonders for band chemistry. Exit Hoffmans, enter Ralph Santolla and Jack Owen, and these two axemen gave Deicide new life. Or new death, in this case.
A fired up Glen Benton is not someone you want to fuck with, really. His mighty roar in the cute-titled 'Death To Jesus', or his quasi-black metal screeches on the thundering, scary 'Walk With The Devil In Dreams You Behold', show a man with a sense of purpose once again. Backed up by some of the more twisted, squealing guitarwork of the year and a constant, brutal battery, this is really as intense as it gets. The furious thrash of closer 'The Lord's Sedition' is a mouth-watering taster of what can still come next from Deicide, who suddently become one of the names to watch very closely once again.
The importance of 'The Stench Of Redemption' is immense for death metal itself. Apart from a few luminous exceptions, the genre as a whole has been suffering from an overall lack of truly classic releases in the past decade or so, and to have a blast of this caliber come from one of the big names should be an inspiration for both young and veteran bands.
'The Stench Of Redemption' was the most blasphemous piece of truly extreme music in many a month, and, while not forgetting Suffocation's thundering return, it was the best death metal album of the year.
A fired up Glen Benton is not someone you want to fuck with, really. His mighty roar in the cute-titled 'Death To Jesus', or his quasi-black metal screeches on the thundering, scary 'Walk With The Devil In Dreams You Behold', show a man with a sense of purpose once again. Backed up by some of the more twisted, squealing guitarwork of the year and a constant, brutal battery, this is really as intense as it gets. The furious thrash of closer 'The Lord's Sedition' is a mouth-watering taster of what can still come next from Deicide, who suddently become one of the names to watch very closely once again.
The importance of 'The Stench Of Redemption' is immense for death metal itself. Apart from a few luminous exceptions, the genre as a whole has been suffering from an overall lack of truly classic releases in the past decade or so, and to have a blast of this caliber come from one of the big names should be an inspiration for both young and veteran bands.
'The Stench Of Redemption' was the most blasphemous piece of truly extreme music in many a month, and, while not forgetting Suffocation's thundering return, it was the best death metal album of the year.
song of the day:
'Walk With The Devil In Dreams You Behold'
I may have to get this some time. I have heard nothing but good about it. I liked them back in the early 90's when the whole Florida scene was big. I kind of got out of death metal around the mid-90's when everything just started sounding the same.
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