It's all over. Deicide has finally lost what was left of it's ever-dulling edge. This is a particularly hard statement to make as I consider myself a Deicide fan of the first order, but it is indeed true. With the band's previous outing their fatigue was becoming apparent, and "Incineratehymn" shows the unit reeling and gasping in an attempt to press on. The album opens up with "Bible Basher", which starts off with a crushing riff that hearkens back to "Legion", but is then promptly subverted with a Deicide standard walk-down riff and Glen's now-annoying sing song rhyming lyrics. It comes to a crashing halt when the chorus is simply the song's title repeated over and over. And this is the best song on the album. I think my faith in this album was destroyed completely with the second track, "Forever Hate You", which starts off in a cliche "Seasons"-era Slayer riff and the slows to a crawl. I always dreaded the advent of a slow Deicide song, and this track is my worst fear confirmed. The rest of the album wanders on in this manner with much of the riffs being closer to over-simplified heavy metal than the infernal combinations of the band once called Amon.

The lyrics, too, are embarrassing and trite with Glen airing his tiresome laundry list of complaints against Christians (though now he punctuates it all with "shit" and "fuck" more often). I think what makes this album such a failure is that Deicide has succeeded in being self-derivative; they sound like all the bands over the years who tried and failed to steal the genius of their early works. I still call myself a Deicide fan to be sure, but doing so will require a strict evasion of this release... then again, plenty of you out there will read this and go, "You're fucking crazy, dude! This rules!"

© 2000 w.s. diabolus