I am a giant homer for death metal; no regrets, no apologies. If a death metal band is just OK, I am in. I love it all. I love old school, new school, blackened, doomened, sludgened, thrashened – all the eneds you can tack on. Brutal, techno, overproduced, underproduced, triggers, inability to hit a steady 16th – I don’t care. It follows, then, that my objectivity when reviewing a death metal album could be called into question. To that I say “Call it in, motherfucker.”
I am an old, angry man who uses the term “motherfucker” far more often than is tolerable.
Still, objectivity is my agreed-upon task on this website. So please read everything I am about to write with this caveat in mind: The worst death metal is still pretty fucking good to me.
Greek defilers Murder Made God are a strong upper-middle tier death metal band. They are not setting the sands afire like Nile, nor are they painting new pictures with them like Gorguts. They occupy a crowded environment in death metal: the very talented, very well produced, very capable songwriting norm. They would fill out a bill with Skinless, Dying Fetus and Origin perfectly. And Enslaved would certainly rest proudly among those other band’s discs on any death-metalhead’s shelf.
Their strengths begin with start-and-stop rhythms: clear, grooving and tight. They can stop on a dime and start again without losing any velocity. New drummer Tolis B. is a constant machine, not wasting a lot of effort on complicated fills but instead pinning guitarist Dennis’ rhythmic playing down. The resulting gatling-gun staccato reminds me of Devolved.
As is so often the case with death metal, Stelios’s bass playing serves mainly to bridge the drums and guitars, rather than adding much in the way of dynamics. But it does the task admirably. Vocalist George Triantafillou’s low-roaring voice has an almost Akerfeldt-ian timbre, emphatic, gruff, and intimidating. He enunciates and punctuates the lyrics in a very complimentary way. The guitars are on the caustic side of the spectrum, recalling Man Must Die’s punchy scraping texture. The production forms a good, crisp sound, with each instrument adding to the mix.
There is plenty to recommend this album: This is a good death metal band playing good death metal. I can confidently commend it to your collection. The only real downside is that this is exactly what it seems: another good genre album in a sea of good genre albums. If you are not like me, a homer for the style, I could see where you would spin this a few times at first, now and then later on… but if it ever got misplaced you may not miss it. You may not even remember you owned it. It is a death metalist’s death metal record.
But in my biased opinion, that is all for the best.
