Desecration – Cemetery Sickness (Metal Age Productions)
Monday, 2nd June 2014
The ‘Welsh Death Metal Bastards’ have returned once more with their seventh album. Featuring songs such as “Tactile Necrophile,” “Cunt Full of Maggots,” and “Cut Up & Fed to the Dog” it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what direction this is going in if you are not familiar with the band. Short blasts of go for the jugular death metal served up in spades.
At 32-minutes and 11 songs, Cemetery Sickness wastes no time getting to its gore-soaked point. Songs fire away with a healthy dose of speed and adrenaline and Desecration keeps the velocity at full speed most of the time with plenty of blastbeats. When they do decide to slow it down, some more modern groove comes in to balance it out. “Cabletie Castrator” and “Grave Secrets” both hit some great strides in this area and the groove does help to eliminate any monotony that often plagues bands of this ilk.
On a different note, there are some samples used (not exactly a game changer in death metal) but when they last as long as the one in “I, Cadaver” it becomes detrimental to the album with extended play. The sampling is almost half the song and isn’t exactly riveting material (at least there is some nice groove behind it). Lengthy samples more often than not damage the otherwise great material as it becomes tedious after a few listens to have to hear it again and again. Humorous/gross as it may be, at least the sampling at the onset of “Tactile Necrophile” is short and to the point.
Well-performed death metal with energy to spare hits the needed marks but don’t expect much more. The sampling doesn’t usually hinder matters (save the one example above) but be advised of its presence on several tracks. If you’re okay with that, Cemetery Sickness will bring you on a brief yet visceral death metal journey.
