Huh... kinda thought I'd dig it more
than I did.
Wow, you know, before I heard Deicide's
newest singles for this LP I wasn't really aware of how long they've
been MIA. After all they were releasing records pretty frequently,
and then they suddenly dropped off the face of the earth before
returning with this beast of a record. And while it sure is nice to
hear some Deicide again, I'm not all that thrilled about Overtures of
Blasphemy. I like it certainly, but for some reason I'm more lukewarm
on it than I expected.
So Overtures of Blasphemy follows the
formula laid down on the often underappreciated In The Minds of Evil,
which was a tight, compact death metal album that focused less on
overall br0tal sound and appearance in favor of thrashy riffs and
moshy grooves, and was all the better for it. 12 tracks, about 40
minutes in length, and the trashy/moshy songwriting makes a return.
Emphasis this time is a bit more on the groove/deathy side of things,
which helps it stand out a bit from its predecessor. All the songs
are at a tight 3 minutes, give or take, and things are generally fast
and free flowing enough to not be boring.
Where the album starts to fail me is
just how meat and potatoes some of the riffing can really be, which
is unfortunate considering how impressive some of those lead singles
are. Just about every song has this problem where a song containing 6
or 7 riffs, will have at least 2 of them being these filler riffs
where it's kind of obvious that the band is just kind of meandering
until they get to the next actually good riff. Lots of meat and
potatoes climbing notes, and the marching grooves on here are just
kind of generic. “Compliments of Christ” and “All That Is Evil”
end up feeling like the same track being so reliant on these more
crushing grooves that don't really leave the desired impact.
Now it's not like I have nothing nice
to say about Overtures. The singles leading up to this album were
great and in the context of the record, they sound even better.
“Excommunicated” will probably end up being a regular in
setlists, as well as providing a much needed speedy pace breaker to
the more plotting tracks leading up to it, and the track in its own
right has so much more punky hard hitting attitude I just don't hear
from death metal bands nowadays.
Production wise I think the band sounds
great. It's basically unchanged from In The Minds of Evil in terms of
tuning and mixing and such, and I think it works. I think some might
complain that the cleaner production may not have the bite this album
needs, and to be fair that certainly may contribute to some of the
tracks sounding more bland than normal. In my opinion, however, I
think the more clean and open mixing contributes to the fullness of
the more diverse riffs the band often goes for. If it was more sloppy
and goopy like your Skinless or Aborted or what have you, I think the
album would probably end up sounding more bland. And yes, obviously
when the grooves do come together, they come together hard, see:
“Anointed in Blood”.
So yeah that's all I really have to say
about Overtures of Blasphemy. It just ended up being a lot more
generic and predictable than I anticipated. I still had fun, I'd
recommend it even, I just have a feeling that I'm going to forget
about it soon and listen to In The Minds of Evil again.
7/10
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