### Broken Hope: Omen of disease

#### 08/10/13 || Ironpants

“Broken hopes… yeah you got that right”

Broken Hope are back, and they are trying to hype up their return quite a bit. Are they on to something good after their absence, or is it the same ´ol same ´ol?

If you remember, they emerged somewhere in 1991 and released five albums , but they never really made an impact on me personally. They played that American gore death that Cannibal Corpse baned the way for. Later it developed into a more technical variant of brutal gore death metal, but also the vocals lingering around in the lower registers, with the grunting as a trademark. As you might already have guessed by the undertone in the first text lines, this is not really my cup of semen?

Now they are re-united, with another singer though, because the original, Joe Ptacek, tragically passed away in 2010, R.I.P., and they have now enlisted Damian Leski from Gorgasm. But… why? Why do we sing in this kind of grunted “non-audible-lyrics” low pig squeal style all of a sudden? I have big problems with this kind of singing style, and I get a bit pissed off when I listen to this kind of stuff. I can’t even try to understand why you choose to articulate the lyrics in this fashion. You might guess that there are some awesome lyrics hidden underneath these grunts and squeals, but I want to hear them. Song titles like “Rendered into lard” and “Give me the bottom half” should contain some gruesome stories to be told? If I had the lyric sheet, I could at least read them, but hey, if I want to fantasize about gruesome shit, I just touch myself and think about a couple of dwarves doing the “Cleveland steamer”…on me.

So there, now that I have totally dissed out the vocal style of Damian Leski, we can carry on. The music on the other hand is on the better half of the spectrum. They produce a mighty fine wall of semi-technical American brutal death metal and there are a pretty good bunch of cool riffs. “Predacious poltergeist” presents a golden mosh part, and “Ghastly” gives you some cool guitar picking. Hell, all the songs induces brutality, so do not fear, if that´s what you want – you got it!

But in the end, this catches minimal attention from me, it´s a good brutal effort, with good musicians, but the vocals makes me wanna listen to something else. Yeah I know, it´s “supposed” to be like that, but in my ears it is just a kind of self-censorship. Are the lyrics so gory, that we, the audience, should not hear them? Let us hear the lyrics damn it! If this is your preferred death metal style, add 3 points to the grade!

Listen to “The flesh mechanic” here and “The docking dead” here.

- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Century Media Records
- Website: Broken Hope Facebook
- Band
- Damian Leski: vocals
- Chuck Wepfer: lead guitar
- Jeremy Wagner: rhythm guitar
- Shaun Glass: bass
- Mike Micezek: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Septic premonitions
- 02. Womb of horrors
- 03. Ghastly
- 04. The flesh mechanic
- 05. Rendered into lard
- 06. Omen of disease
- 07. The docking dead
- 08. Give me the bottom half
- 09. Predacious poltergeist
- 10. Blood gullet
- 11. Carnage genesis
- 12. Choked out and castrated
- 13. Incinerated (2013 redux)