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Soreption: Illuminate the excessive

04/09/08 || The Duff

The tragic news of Vitek’s passing has left the future for Decapitated uncertain; this puts me in a bit of a spot as Decapitated are still possibly my favourite death metal band – the first I ever listened to, yet somehow able to overcome the greats when stealing first place in my heart of hearts (this being a big player in the “cockstirring” pathway of my biology, triggers commonly being death metal and/or oversized boot-ey/slightly chubby women), despite their shortcomings, namely a filler track here and there and not much of a departure from the Vader sound of which they drew the majority of their influence. Enter Soreption, not quite the answer to all my prayers, but definitely the closest I’ll ever get to the young, Polish legends anytime within the next year or so – these guys sound like a mixture of more aggressive Decapitated and recent Aeon (both bands hailing from Sweden), as well as all the regular classic bands; not the future of death metal, but this E.P. certainly has its appeal.

The production on “Illuminate the Excessive” is sharp; I mean, the guitars are crunchy, but then the stop-start riffs end to the fraction of a milli-second, the kind of sudden/to a pinpoint instant in time that wouldn’t get you a reaction like “Hey, now; it’s okay. It happens to most guys.”, but rather a furrowed brow, agape expression and eyes that indicate the beginnings of a question like “Wha’…?! What the fuck just happened?”. The riffs are usually quite standard, but little bits and pieces are chucked about between the regularities (such as a triplet-riff, harmonic or intense tremolo picking section that springs up out of nowhere) to add variation; what’s more, Soreption guitarist Anton Svedin knows how to write a solo – not one to practice nonsense shredding for the sake of it, although the fluent phrasing has quite a degree of feel chopped out due to the very slick production.

I’m guessing if you’re at all a death metal fan this day and age, I’d have more chance convincing you that I type these reviews with my six inch-just shy mansteelcock whilst having my voluptuous pleasure-beads devoured by Sienna Miller and Joan Rivers (variety is the spice of life) than getting you to believe that the drums on this effort aren’t triggered. When the guitars are the focal point, as is the case with most of this E.P., then it isn’t such a problem, but when it comes to the simpler riffs, as in with track four (titled “4” – all numerically tracked, a trend to be continued with their forthcoming full-length), the drums sound weak and out of place alongside the other instruments.

You can almost very nearly hear the bass too, especially when compared to other tech death metal albums – they’ve done quite a commendable job, considering the attention for such albums is often geared towards the guitars and drums, displaying some shining talent from the young Rickard Persson. I’d like to say that the vocals remind me of Mikael Åkerfeldt, but truth is they remind me more of the Farmakon vocalist (from their debut album, where he didn’t quite sound so much like Mikael Åkerfeldt), who sounds quite a bit like Mikael Åkerfeldt. You get the picture.

The big thing about this E.P. is that, other than being the debut release for these guys, it is also the debut release for the label to which they are signed, and I reckon they could have handled the selling of this product better. For a four track E.P., this is very expensive – the label justifies this by providing us with a DVD of the band’s first ever performance at Gatufesten Sundsvall (translate that yourselves), but it doesn’t have a menu, doesn’t have chapters (meaning you have to watch the whole thing), and hasn’t got the greatest sound quality either – that said, from what I can make out of “9”, the new effort isn’t to disappoint. And that sums it up – if you miss Decapitated, then this comes highly recommended if you’re willing to cough up; to anyone else, await the full-length.

7 promising starts out of 10.

Information
Released: 2008
Label: Cube 1 Records
Website: www.sorreption.com
Band
Fredrik Soderberg: vocals
Anton Svedin: guitars
Voldtekt: guitar
Rickard Persson: bass
Tony Westermark: drums

Tracklist
01. I
02. II
03. III
04. IV

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