Invocator Denmark
"Now more or less Jacob Hansen's project, Invocator continues along the lines established on "Weave the Apocalypse" and further developed on "Dying to Live".
This album is slightly more thrashy than its predecessor and with the departure of Per M. Jensen, the drumming has become much less progressive (not that there's anything wrong with the drumming on this album, it's just a different style). Nonetheless, as on "Dying to Live", this album maintains an interesting equilibrium between the groovy metal, thrash metal and progressive metal. While quite original, one might argue that musically "Through the Flesh to the Soul" is slightly reminiscent of Chuck Schuldiner's progressive death metal albums (with Death)."
"Less aggressive and more complex than "Excursion demise", but no less brutal "Weave the Apocalypse" is a .a progressive, yet brutal, Thrash Metal album, whose influences are apparent.
The pace is considerably slower on this one than on "Excursion Demise", the riffs being much heavier and the production sound much more brutal. The arrival of able guitarist Perle Hansen allows for in more refined, melodic and technical guitar solos than on "Excursion Demise", and drummer Per M. Jensen's work seems to draw on more progressive drumming along the lines of Dream Theater, Fates Warning and Psychotic Waltz without totally throwing away the Lombardo-esque explosive style witnessed on "Excursion Demise". On the whole, "Weave the apocalypse" is a quite progressive album with comples drumming and rhythmic patterns, some odd time signatures cropping up here and there, and also offers some complex almost jazzy bass patterns. At the same time, it also seems to draw on the groovy brutality of the almost percussive-like guitar rhythm patterns introduced into modern metal by Pantera.
Invocator blends all of these influences together into a very original type of groovy/brutal/progressive thrash metal album, which rivals Death's "Symbolic" in complexity, musical prowess and brutality and is highly recommended to any metal aficionado."
""Dying to Live" is an example of how well it works if you blend the groovy brutality of Pantera with the technicality of Dream Theater, Fates Warning and Psychotic Waltz.
The musical style on this album is quite unique without trying to hide its influences. Gone are the Death Metal features that characterized "Excursion Demise" apart from tritonal patterns here and there, but the brutality remains.
"Dying to Live" is recommendable to any metal fan, and one of the best releases within the era of early modern metal - displaying both finesse and groove."
"Difficult to obtain, "Excursion Demise" from 1991 is a rare gem within the genre of original Death/Thrash metal. It's stylistically close to Sepultura of the "Beneath the Remains"/"Arise" era, also drawing on Slayer, but offering plenty of originality.
The tunes are generally fast-paced and full of evil-sounding tritonically based guitar riffs, and Jacob Schultz' solos which seem to be inspired by Kirk Hammet's use of the wah pedal and Kerry King's use of shredding and the whammy bar. Per M. Jensen's explosive drumming seems to be primarily inspired by Dave Lombardo and Igor Cavalera, and he certainly displays skills rivaling theirs. The structure of the songs on this album is generally more complex on terms of time- and tempo changes than seen with many of the extreme metal acts of the early 1990s and late 1980s.
"Excursion Demise" is recommended to any would-be extreme metal aficionado."
