As soon as the 4-click and the down-tuned, doom-charged opener "Mindscrape" danced into your ear drums, you knew you were in for a depressing experience. This was death metal at its most bleak, with a fair amount of influence from Celtic Frost and Sabbath. Suddenly we hammer into the second track "Human Cesspool" and the band starts flashing out the grindcore blast beats. I wanted to like this album, there were some groovy parts, but in all the music is mediocre and uninspiring, tripping over itself in the mad dash to flaunt its heaviness (as was so common for death metal in this era). The riffs here sound as if they took all of 30 seconds each to write. The lyrics aren't exactly unique either. The band was best when playing its slower doom stuff, like in the song "The Suffering", when it breaks into an evil riff that would make all the old Hellhound roster cringe in fear. Avoid this unless it's in a bargain bin and you want something mindless and heavy.

© 2000 pizarro