Deicide – Till Death Do Us Part (Earache Records)
Thursday, 14th March 2013
If this really is the last Deicide album (as Glen Benton has hinted in several interviews), then consider the band having come full circle. Naturally, there were some significant road bumps and career mishaps along the way, namely the God-awful (yeah, yeah…) Insineratehym and Torment In Hell, but Benton, drummer Steve Asheim and the boys have rebounded with two successive stellar albums in the form of 2006’s stunningly good Stench of Redemption and now this year’s Till Death Do Us Part.
Utilizing the same lineup (Benton, Asheim, Jack Owen, and Ralph Santolla), Deicide has forsaken the bulk of the knifing melodic guitar action that madeStench… so invigorating. Instead, a lot of Till Death… stays in the meaty and chunky realm, sounding like, as advertised, a cross between Legion and the aforementioned Stench….
In spite of Benton’s never-ending bellow (which can grate on one’s soul), the album unleashes some pretty strong cuts, especially the rampant “In the Eyes of God,” a track with a savage pace that is easily one of the band’s best pure death metal cuts. “Worthless Misery” follows suit, with a barrage of unsettling riffs set to the tempo of Asheim’s pounding drums. “Severed Ties” gets the nod for the album highlight, as it is the sum parts of Deicide: manic, slightly caustic and has one of Benton’s monotone, uninteresting vocal parts over top of a pretty killer groove.
Till Death Do Us Part will doubt satiate those turned off by the melodic tendencies of Stench of Redemption, as its unrelenting brutality and cohesiveness puts it on par with 1995’s oft-overlooked Once Upon Cross.
No, this doesn’t rank with Legion or even the first, self-titled album, but should allow Benton to maintain that shit-eating grin he’s been sporting since the Hoffman brothers left. More importantly, Benton should thank his lucky stars Steve Asheim is the creative force behind this band – no predominant figure in death metal has it so easy…
(This content was originally posted on Blistering.com)
