### Requiem: Formed at birth

#### 11/09/09 || Habakuk

This Swiss bunch is releasing their 4th album this year (July 31st, to be exact), and I can’t say I have high hopes for it after hearing how they evolved from the strong “Government denies knowledge” to the rather bland “Premier killing league”. Not even the fact that its promotion will include “two new video clips containing live shots and spectacular views of a real salt-mine.” A REAL SALT MINE! Kenya believe it. The only “Salt mine” I’m interested in can be found on “Misery Index”, thanks. It all started promising though – if you feel like digging into their back catalogue back to album number one from 2003. After hearing a couple of songs and liking 2006’s “Government…”, I did so in some metal store in Chicago some years ago. I’m still tapping my shoulder for it because I haven’t seen this ugly album cover anywhere ever since, which I blame on Revenge Productions. Considering they were on a small label like that, I can forgive them that “Formed at birth” doesn’t have the crispest of productions. The snare sound isn’t all too great and makes the blasts sound a bit weak, but don’t let them put you off an otherwise cool Swiss death metal album. This sounds more like early 90’s Florida than the land of cheese and watches.

Requiem are competent musicians, the singer has a powerful raspy growl and they rely heavily on pounding groove meeting rhythmic blast beats, combining them with classic death metal shredding and disharmonic guitar work. They don’t take too many clever turns in their sound, but grip the steering wheel tight and steadily keep the direction forwards. Full-on blasting that turns into rumbling double bass parts and back again, and some muted start-stop riffing to keep things interesting. There even is the odd d-beat punk-o-rama part in “Child of a new generation”, and punk + death metal is always a safe bet with me. Great bits are evenly distributed across the whole album, so every title has something in store for the avid listener, but unfortunately, many of the songs are just too fucken looong. When you’ve seen it all, they just dig something up again they’ve already shown you – Look, a blasting verse! No, put it back where it belongs: two-minute songs. Most of the songs on here last for around four.

At one time however, they manage to bring it all together in perfect flow: “Murder U.S.A.” is one fucken beast of a song. At around 3:00, it kicks you in the guts with a slamming mid-tempo break that intensifies with open riffing, turns into short speed parts, and once you’re up there in up-tempo it smashes you back to zero into a quick double bass sequence just to pick you up with an even nastier blast part. And again, and again, and It doesn’t let go until it’s over. Classy shit right there, for sure. Alright industrial remix as well.

Too bad they didn’t quite get it as right as this with most of the other songs. Those are good enough to keep fans of blasting Florida death metal happy, but could easily be cut short for around a minute each and would sustain their partial intensity a lot better.

I like what I hear, but I just find myself skipping tracks when they should still run for one minute.

- Information
- Released: 2003
- Label: Revenge Productions
- Website: www.requiem-net.com
- Band
- Michael Kuster: vocals, bass
- Phil Klauser: guitars
- Ralph Inderbitzin: guitars
- Reto Crola: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. River of blood
- 02. Child of a new generation
- 03. Mind control
- 04. Formed at birth
- 05. Alone
- 06. Sentenced to death
- 07. Murder U.S.A.
- 08. Kill-fuck-die
- 09. Living in misery
- 10. Murder U.S.A. (Blackbird remix)
- 11. Fuck-kill-die (Brutal death version)