Valkyrian Music

Desecrate
XIII, The Death
Due for release/Released: April 2012
Melodic Death Metal/ Experimental Metal
Released via Label: Inverse Records

‘XII, The Death’ is the second album from the Italian melodic death metal band Desecrate. The band was originally formed back in 1995. After the release of one demo and their debut album ‘Moonshiny Tales: The Torment and The Rapture’ the band decided to split up in 2001. It wasn’t until 2010 that they decided to reform as well as alter their style from death metal to melodic, piano infused death metal.

The opening track ‘Croatoan’ sounds strange mostly due to the fact that I can’t make out a word of what the singer is saying. The vocals are just downright weird, I don’t know what to call this style apart from avantgarde-experimental (a.k.a. random and nonsensical). Then there’s the issue of a piano trying to force its way into metal songs like ‘My Devil’s Gonna Cry’. ‘XII’ is the closest thing on here that resembles melodic death metal thanks to the guitars and the significant lack of piano noise making it the only semi-decent track on here.

Sadly this relief is short-lived as the subsequent tracks offer nothing other than more piano-infused cacophony with the occasional hint of melodic death metal e.g. the vocals at the start of ‘Hashashiyyin’. As if that wasn’t odd enough, the guitars are somewhat progressive sounding at times and some tracks feature even worse sounding clear vocals such as the ones on the aforementioned ‘Hashashiyyin’. Then there’s the abomination that is ‘Karma’ which comes complete with: more piano, nu-metal style vocals, occasional metal guitars riffs, solos and random, whispered narrative at random intervals.

Calling this ‘melodic death metal’ is an insult to the term!

1.5/5

Iza Raittila

This entry was posted on 4th June 2012 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.