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Monstrosity: Rise to power

02/03/04 || Lord K Philipson

Monstrosity are a bunch of fucken Americans who have been around forever, always standing in the shadows of the bigger acts like Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel and the likes.

It’s just not fucken fair if you ask me.

I never really took the time to check out what these guys are about, but kinda expected some B-league death metal, at best. I was wrong. Dead fucken wrong even. I’ll take Monstrosity over the above mentioned bands any day. It’s actually some fuck-fine piece of death metal this newest effort. I cannot really judge their previous material, but I have to go back and look it up, coz if it’s anything like this one, Monstrosity can easily be one of the more underrated bands in death metal today. We all know I’m a huge fan of blastbeats, right? Monstrosity aren’t really ALL about that, this shit is more a walk on the heavy side, with added groove and chunky riffing. But do not despair, they have their fair share of blasts as well, “From wrath to ruin” is a 4 minute piece of blasting death metal with some heaviness thrown in for good measure. Those infamous blast-beats occur here and there thru the songs, more like a nice spice than anything else.

Opener ”The Exordium” starts with a riff I wish I wrote, but I’ll have to settle for stealing it. One of the best tracks on the album, and the beginning of the record sets the standard for the remaining time this CD lasts. Even if none of the songs answer to the standard of this named opener, it’s all decent death metal at worst.

“The fall of Eden” is a 2 minute instrumental that includes some rhythm-guitars that sound so Rosicrucian it’s not even funny. Rosicrucian is a Swedish band no one ever heard of, you naturally didn’t know that. I don’t think this theft is intentional though, so I’ll let it pass for now. Do it again, and I’ll smack you though.

The production is good, the bandmembers are ugly, and the album-cover is not the best I have ever seen, so all things are in order for a good amount of death fucken metal.

I have to make some rantings about the musicianship as well naturally…

Something I appreciate by this band is the fact that they incorporate good guitar-solos into their shit. A neat solo is always welcomed in my part of hell. The drummer delivers a lot of double-bass (hell, or this wouldn’t fucken be death metal in my book). As always, I can not hear any bass as all bands mix it too low on their albums. Why include bass if you cannot hear it? Listen to “HDCE” by The Project Hate, and take notes. That’s how a bass should sound. Anyways… The vocalist isn’t anything special, he has the standard growl with no personality whatever, and it, of course, works all fine. These guys can play and aren’t afraid to show it.

Ending track “Shadow of obliteration” pisses me off though. Not becoz it’s a bad track, but becoz of the length. It’s over 12 minutes and 6 of those are just guitar-noises and bullshit. I bet they have a thing in their contract that makes them have to record an album that’s no less than 40 minutes, and when you don’t have material worth of it, do some bullshit for 6 minutes and there we go…

A sincere “fuck you Monstrosity” for that one.

But to end this crap, Monstrosity are not serving anything extra-special to the death metal menu, but their dish of music makes for a good snack, without a doubt.

7,5/10

Information
Released: 2003
Label: Metal Blade
Website: www.metalblade.de
Band
Pat Hall: guitar
Sam Molina: vocals
Mike Poggione: 500-stringed bass
Lee Harrison: drums
Tony Norman: guitars

Tracklist
01. The Exordium
02. Awaiting Armageddon
03. Wave Of Annihilation
04. The Fall Of Eden
05. Chemical Reaction
06. A Casket For The Soul
07. Rise To Power
08. Visions Of Violence
09. From Wrath To Ruin
10. Abysmal Gods
11. Shadow Of Obliteration

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