Band's List Thrash Death Deathchain Cult of Death

You have already seen the mark for this album, and you start reading the review with a voiceless question: "How it can be: Deathchain is a good thrash death metal act!"? Yes, even Finnish bands can disappoint us. And unfortunately, Deathchain's third album, where we can hear the new vocalist, Khaos, and a little bit different style of music than before, didn't reach such a high level as their previous albums. Who would guess that small shift of accent from thrash to death metal and a bit less melody would give such big result!

You know how short death metal reviews sometimes are, because this music is about action, drive, movement, and furious emotions, not about philosophy nor words nor deep thoughts. Deathchain's Cult of Death is more death metal than their previous albums. In fact, this is driving and energetic, fast music with good musicianship (yes they didn't lose their skills), heavy guitar work, solid but a bit rough production, and the vocal itself is quite nice – but it's as nice as many others on hundreds of other death metal albums. This music is full of aggression and wild speed. All the time, every single song is fast and monotonous, and – you can guess – it's quite boring. Deathchain earlier was more about thrash metal with more guitar solos, more variations, and more different and many-sided music. This time the musicians tried another line. I guess some fans of brutal music may like it, but those who liked the previous album would also mark Cult of Death quite low.

At first, with the start of "Deathammer", the music breathes out power and inspires. It's a good, quite interesting opening song, but already the next one, "Hour of the Exorcist", is more boring and monotonous, and in the same vein continues "Pit of the Possessed" and the rest, and some separate good guitar riffs don't save the situation. Lack of variations, lack of guitar solos that sometimes before the band had, trivial and obvious lines – those are characteristics of these songs. At least vocalist K.J. Khaos tries to make his lines a bit different, so it gives some feeling, but overall the songs remain in the same quite narrow style; one is like another, and it sounds fairly stupid and boring.

Cult of Death after all has become a cult album. But unfortunately, it's a cult of boredom and dullness.