Psychogenocide 2011

"Death metal and the United Arab Emirates, I must admit, are not two concepts that I have ever related to one another - that has changed now with the release of Nervecell's sophomore album "Psychogenocide".

And what an awesome death metal album this is!

After a dark and very well performed acoustic introduction with Middle Eastern elements, the album proper begins the process of severe ass-kicking. Nervecell draw on literally every subgenre within the deat hmetal universe, ranging from old school death metal and death-grind over blackened death metal and technical death metal to melodeath and brutal death metal - with a massive injection of thrash metal to boot.

In other words, "Psychogenocide" is a pure deathfest from beginning to end.

As a natural consequence of the implementation of so many subgenres within death metal, "Psychogenocide" is a quite varied album - and not in the sense that some songs belong to this genre and others to that genre; Nervecell have managed to virtually stuff elements from all the subgenres into every single song on the album. This means that you can hear simple riffage and technical riffage, melodic leads and blastbeats all in the same song (some good examples of this are "شنق" and the slightly more brutal "Driven by Nescience").

The musicianship is very high on all accounts, and especially Rami Mustafa's guitar solos deserve mention, as they are both shreddy and melodic, combining a rock sensibility with technical finesse, and, when he incorporates Middle Eastern elements into his solos, as in The Taste of Betrayal", the guitar-loving listener is in for a very special treat.

There's a deathfest going on here, and you're invited. Don't miss out on it.

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"