Change is good. This is especially true in the case of Quebec's other death/grind pseudogeniuses Gorguts. The transmutation that the band underwent between the release of this (now out of print) album and 1998's highly acclaimed (and scrutinized) bizarre opus Obscura.

Obscura is an album much unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It consists of chaotic and atonal clusters of seemingly random note successions, but also sounds oddly musical at the same time. You either love it or you hate it. I couldn't, for the life of me, understand what the hell they were trying to do at first, but as I gave the album more listens, it gradually worked its way into my list of favorites.

This album, on the other hand, is much the opposite. From the opening notes of "With Their Flesh, He'll Create," this album stinks of being nothing more than a Cannibal Corpse/Suffocation clone. Not a good thing, considering most Cannibal Corpse material is insipid and highly overrated, while there has NEVER been a band that has sucessfully matched Suffocation in terms of quality riff-for-riff.

There is little to no variation between tracks. All the songs have a very similar rambling succession of time changes that seem to be there just to show off the band's playing skill (which is considerable). This problem is compounded by the sluggish, cumbersome progression of most songs (slow-fast-slow-fast...but never fast enough) as well as Luc LeMay's extremely boring and monotonous vocals and the flat (read: Scotty Burns) production.

This album would be better off as a three- or four-song EP. The individual songs are all quite good, but the album gets very formulaic very fast and there are very few riffs here that truly pique my interest. Honestly, this album puts me to sleep.

I'll give Gorguts a lot of credit for being great musicians and writing excellent lyrics, but this is far from a pinnacle album for them. But thankfully, this stage of development for the band is in the past and they're now one of the most unique musical ensembles in the metal world.

This review is credited to:
The Havoc Vulture