Sinister, including this release, deserve to be praised for being able to sign to a major level, live through a trend (hmmm what form of music has almost destroyed death metal...hmmm), and still create some excellent music. What we have here is a near-20 minute digipak (excellent packaging and art) of fucking GREAT death metal, done in a style those of us who enjoy Sinister are familiar with. The disc starts out with a basic, atmosphere setting intro, and then jumps into some heavy, crunching mid-paced music that surprised me since I was expecting a mass blast beat. The song (the title track) continues in this fashion for about two minutes before hopping into a nifty melodic riff that opens for a GREAT blast beat. No levels of brutality are spared here (this is brutal death, but doesn't surpass any other bands obviously) yet Sinister, just as always, create a success mixing of blasting and melodocism to create the music from getting either boring or simply silly in it's brutality. The opener is quite hateful as well, particularly if you read the nicely done (luckily they've left the Sumerian religion topic as shown on "Hate) lyrics while listening to Mike's non-boring grunts. Bart has taken over guitars full time now (a chap by the name of Michel is the new bass-player) and creates some excellent riffs which far surpass Hate (minus "To Mega Therion" of course :P) and bring back feelings of the good old days (earlier albums that is). Two new songs, two re-recorded tracks, and a load of excellent death metal.

© 1997 brand