Total Desaster - Warfare Noise [Demo] (2011, Metaltifus Productions)

Black and thrash metal have always seemed to go well hand in hand, and the Colombian trio Total Desaster (named after the Destruction song) takes this old kinship and combines it, making for some fairly uninteresting blackened thrash metal. Right off the bat I could tell it would be heavily black metal inspired, but Total Desaster (formerly known as Devastation) aren't reinventing the genre.

First of all the riffs, catchy as they may seem, are incredibly short which results in incredibly monotonous and repetitive song structure. In all honesty it's just boring to hear the same three riffs over and over for the duration of a song. The drums aren't exactly helping in that regard as they're slight variations of the same d-beat over and over and over.
One thing that has a little appeal about the Warfare Noise demo is that it's raw as fuck, but unfortunately having only one guitarist this also results in some solos that completely ruin any flow they might have put forth.
I've gone rather slavishly over all aspects of the 2011 demo except the bass and the vocals. The vocals are pretty uninteresting when you can even hear them. They're just too low in the mix making them little more than background noise, and the bass really varies in quality. It fits alright in Dive Bomber, but on Armies of Death it sounds terrible with its almost off-beat picking. It could probably be compared to having your face slapped repeatedly with a limp dick.

In closing Total Desaster's Warfare Noise is a demo that just has too little work put into it. It doesn't feel like a proper effort and probably won't anytime soon dethrone bands like Deströyer 666 as the top bands of the genre. The production, while gritty, has too little warmth and sounds too much like Burzum's earliest recordings. That said, the drumset actually sounds pretty good compared to the rest. 4/10 guitars.

Tracklist:
1. Intro
2. Dive Bomber
3. Hell Attack
4. Devastation
5. Armies of Death
6. Antichrist (Sepultura Cover)

TOTAL DESASTER official site
Metaltifus Productions official site

Centurion - Serve No One [Full length] (2012, Wydawnictwo Muzyczne Psycho)

Centurion takes inspiration from a great variety of bands, but once in a while something shines through, like "Cut the Throat" which has a certain Cannibal Corpse feel to it in the verse parts, mainly because of the really fast vocals. In general it seems the Polish band's focus is on speed maybe rather than riffing, and this results in a very uniform and even album. Come to think of it, it seems many moderne death metal bands are this way. While many of the original death metal acts were also rather fast for their time, I can't help but feel that these bands were superior in the way that they didn't sacrifice listenability and sweet riffs in order to go all-in on speed.

One of the things I have against Centurion's otherwise very good album Serve No One is that it's sort of a one trick pony. Sure, they mix things up from the blast beat powered death metal with the occassional sinister riff now and then, but unfortunately it's not enough to create a varying and diverse album experience.

Serve No One is a phenomenal album if you enjoy fast-as-fuck death metal with a shit-ton of blast beats and well-executed vocal sections, but ultimately those factors, in my book, aren't quite enough to create a great death metal album. This second album from the Polish deathdealers comes ten years after their first one, and from the lack of variety on Serve No One I'm going to assume they didn't use all those years on refining the riffs or polish their sound. Make no mistake, Centurion aren't novices in the terms of death metal music and Serve No One is a text-book example of modern death metal. And maybe even a little too text-book example for me. The band show little personality and doesn't stand out from the crowd enough, and I only hope that they on future releases will be more distinct from the hordes of other bands in the genre.

In closing, Serve No One is a good and fast death metal album. I've heard a lot of death metal since I started listening to metal, and Centurion are certainly above average. Just not sufficiently so to be excellent. 7/10 guitars.

Tracklist:
1. Total Terror
2. Ego Ultimus
3. Sacrilege
4. Gateways to Condemnation
5. Cut the Throat
6. Desecration of the Holy Kingdom
7. Thy Portal
8. Under the Black Banner
9. Ritual Massmurder
10. No One to Serve

CENTURION official site
Wydawnictwo Muzyczne Psycho official site

Embrional - Absolutely Anti-Human Behaviors [Full length] (2012, Old Temple)

It would seem the Polish are very big on death metal, 'cause here's yet another death metal band from Poland. However the four-man strong band Embrional have a niche a tad bit different; Progressive death metal with some strong black-ish tendencies.

Their sound is utterly chaotic and sounds like the soundtrack to psychosis. The near constant blast-beats mixed with the choppy and incredibly precise guitars makes the music sound a bit segmentary and hacky, but it serves the important purpose of focusing the attention on blistering speeds and intricate riffs.
What this, in turn, affects is my enjoyability of the music. Embrional, like so many other progressive and technical bands, have sacrificed variety, groove and hooks in the pursuit of intricateness and technicality, thereby losing a lot of appeal.

And yet, even if Absolutely Anti-Human Behaviors lacks catchy riffs and variety, it kind of grows on you. You start noticing the little things, and the atmosphere isn't half bad. I feel that Embrional needs to mix things up a little, but more melodic tracks like the instrumental Necropolis does help a little in that regard. Yet the fact that most of the songs are incredibly similar actually makes those kind of tracks feel more odd and out of place. However, the fact that the quartet's music sometimes has a certain black metal feel makes it a little more interesting - It gives the music an extra advantage over many of the other bands of the genre, like how Augury's use of clean vocals and Fleshgod Apocalypse's use of classical music makes them stand out.

To round up, Embrional is a promising Polish band with 2 albums on their rap sheet. Their own personal brand of death metal features blistering fast blast beats, technical guitar riffs and deep, growling vocals. Though a bit lacking in variety, they do their thing in a satisfactory manner and Absolutely Anti-Human Behaviors is an honest and damn solid attempt at the genre. I don't care particularly much for progressive death metal because in my experience most of the bands focus too much of their energy on being "intelligent", but I found Embrional's second album to be worthy of several listens. Their guitar work and vocal efforts especially are strongpoints in this band. 7/10 guitars.

Tracklist:
1. Possessed by Evil
2. Disgraceful Enslavement
3. Absolutely Anti-Human Behaviors
4. Necropolis
5. The Last Step into Nothingsness
6. Beyond the Abyss
7. Maniacal Madness
8. Bestial Torture
9. Dismal Sign
10. Mankind's Decline
11. Vermin of the Earth

EMBRIONAL official site
Old Temple official site

Deus Otiosus - Murderer [Full length] (2010, FDA Rekotz)

Death metal is by far one of the most popular metal genres in Denmark. The legends of the scene like Iniquity, Illdisposed, Dominus, Konkhra, Exmortem, Panzerchrist and Corpus Mortale were in more recent years followed up by equally prolific bands such as Hatesphere, Dawn of Demise and Thorium, and bands like Cerekloth and Undergang have given old school death metal a resurgeance in recent times.

Playing that very style we have another Danish band, which is more or less an allstar lineup. Featuring members from Church Bizarre, Cerekloth, Victimizer and Hideous Invasion the band DEUS OTIOSUS is by no means comprised of newbies, and their heritage from the other bands really shines through on this 2010 debut album. The album "Murderer" is an 8-song showcase of how you write fucking awesome old school death metal without shitty production.

There are catchy riffs aplenty when the primal roar of the first track sets the tone. Immediately Deus Otiosus make it clear what they're about: Death metal like our moms used to make it (well, not really, but you catch my drift) with a twist of thrash and a production that makes the music heavy as fuck but still has plenty of room for crystal clear sound. Only rarely have I heard a debut album with as good a flow as Deus Otiosus' Murderer. I admit it took me more than one listening to get into the album, but when I took the time to really listen I was rewarded with a beyond satisfying listening experience.

Production-wise every is as it should be. Audible and perfectly balanced, the vocals neatly binding it all together in a writhing mass of noxious death. Normally I would say 8 songs is a bit short for a death metal album, but the length of the tracks fully justify the small number of songs as most clock in at more than 5 minutes.
Despite all my praise, there is one thing Murderer lacks. I said there are plenty of catchy riffs, and I stand by that statement, but ultimately the album isn't as memorable as some of the albums that Deus Otiosus have likely listened to. But Murderer is an album that is so masterfully put together, so solid and so deserving of appraisal that I'm forced to give it an 8/10 guitars.

Tracklist:
1. I Have Seen Him Slay
2. Thousand Arms of the Dead
3. Wall of Violence
4. Ye Pigs of Little Faith
5. Whore Limbs
6. No Life
7. Ash World
8. Murderer

DEUS OTIOSUS official site
FDA Rekotz official site

Skjaersild - Skjaersild / Damned Roots [Demo] (2005 / 2007, Xaphan Records)

When it comes to black metal it's easy for an outsider to think all the bands sound alike, and the veritable hordes of so-called bedroom black metal bands aren't exactly helping.
I this review I will be taking a look at the Spanish black metal band Skjaersild and their first two demos, Skjaersild from 2005 and Damned Roots from 2007.

Skjaersild, the band who's name I keep misspelling, offer some fairly mediocre, slow-moving atmospheric/depressive black metal on the first demo. The two tracks, "Blinded to See the Most Inhuman Pain" and "Rotten Nature", feature little more than heavily distorted and rather simple guitars playing some moderately enjoyable riffs thick with melancholia.
The lack of drums and, well, any other instrument actually, on the first track makes the music sound depth-less and doesn't really leave much to the imagination or so to speak.
When drums are finally intruduced on the second track, the 10-minute opus "Rotten Nature", it is in companionship with the same bland guitars we heard on the previous track, only to occasionally be interrupted by what kinda sounds like the clean guitar MIDI-sounds from Guitar Pro with a ton of reverb.
When it comes to the structure of Rotten Sound the parts of the track are simply too incoherent and seemingly unrelated to each other to justify throwing them together into one long torturous track.
The fact that the cover is nothing more than the name written in capital, white gothic letters and a Mitsubishi-logo on a black background doesn't really make the demo feel more worked through or serious.

The 2007 demo "Damned Roots" pretty much features the same unexciting guitar work and, most notably, even more of those harrowing MIDI sounds that plagued the first demo. Little has changed in the two years that it apparently took to complete this 3-track demo, and pinpointing differences is almost completely impossible, one exception being the fact that the last song, "Looking at the Emptiness" actually has a couple of layers instead of just being guitar and drums. But as with Rotten Nature from 2005, Looking at the Emptiness suffers from the same problem: A total lack of coherency and continuity. It's basically just a bunch of completely unrelated bits put after one another. And these parts are everything from what sounds like stuff ripped from the Diablo II soundtrack to Burzum-inspired ambient-ish stuff, which by the way is more or less completely ripped off of Burzum's Gebrechlichkeit.

All in all both demos are very lacklustre and none of the tracks feel like they're particularly cared for or worked through, and it makes the final outcome seem unfinished and unpolished like a work in progress. It simply isn't a very wholesome listening experience. 4/10 guitars.

Tracklist (Skjaersild):
1. Blinded to See the Most Inhuman Pain
2. Rotten Nature

Tracklist (Damned Roots):
1. Looking at the Emptiness
2. Is Not a Voice Anymore
3. Go Away

SKJAERSILD official site
Xaphan Records official site