Resurrection Macabre 2009

"When "Resurrection Macabre" came out, I was very disappointed with it. The big mistake I did was to expect the album to be like "Spheres" or "Testimony of the Ancients", and, of course, it was like neither album, because the band focused on being brutal rather than innovative, drawing more on "Consuming Impulse" in terms of style, but with many modern death metal elements added. Another problem that I had was that a lot of the tracks struck me as being repetitive in the sense that the main approach of many of them was to take a typical Pestilence style compact riff and then just repeat it a crapload of times. I also had problems with the vocals which I, having never been a big fan Pestilence vocals, thought were very annoying.

Now, a couple of years down the line, the album has grown on me, and I actually quite like it. I see now that the repetition of riffs really works well in terms of adding intensity to the music, and I also like the introduction of more modern elements like blastbeats into the Pestilence style. I have gotten used to the vocals, although I probably never will be able to appreciate the death grunts that serve as the introduction to the first track "Devouring Frenzy". Interestingly, that track was my least favorite track off the album, but now it is actually, along with "Fiend", my favorite track on "Resurrection Macabre".

In a way, I can understand where the flak that this album has received came from - it originated in the unfulfilled expectations of this being like "Spheres", but this album deserves to be defined, not in relation to "Spheres" but in its own right as a death metal album, and as a death metal album, it is not brilliant, but it certainly is not bad either.

(review originally posted at metalmusicarchives.com)"