Band's List Technical Thrash Reprisal Scars Killing Art of Self-Deception

Without any intro, this album floods into the jungles of technical thrash metal, opening with a grooving guitar riff. This debut album of the band from Central Finland contains 10 songs, almost every one of which lasts about 3 minutes, a good and classic time for this intense and energetic style. Growls, powerful guitar riffs, a few nice solos, some melodies and tempo changes, drive and again drive – that is Killing Art of Self-Deception.

Ok, as this is a debut album and the band is quite young, let's see who these thrash-death metal maniacs from Finland are. In 2003, employees of the popular club Lutakko in their hometown, Jyväskylä, formed a band where extreme metal would meet some melody stuff. They've produced several demos, and finally decided to conquer the world with the album. As we can see, they almost succeeded. This music continues along the lines of the demos, though maybe the album needs something more… The more you listen to the album, the more you understand that it lacks some variety and something unexpected. It's too much like many other bands. Yes, there are cool riffs and nice solos, but they are not catchy enough and they go all the time in the same way. At first, it seems to be pretty good – every song starts with some nice riff and sounds pretty driving (and maybe it's really amazing in concert), but then you notice that every song is like the previous one, and the vocals especially (almost all of us listen first of all to the vocal line) are quite boring. It's nearly impossible to tell about every song separately : every phrase will be the same. Just the last one, "Done Is Done", stands out. It's quite epic and atmospheric, so you wake up at this point and ask: oh, the album does end now, really ?!

But let's notice that the production is really good, surprisingly good for a debut album. Another factor (rather questionably good) is that you can hear some guests : solos by J-V Hintikka from Machine Men, vocals by Teijo Hakkola from Where Victims Lie, and others. The booklet is made in grey and green colours, with some stone background, but with fine pictures, and still you can easily read the lyrics - nothing outstanding, an absolutely normal standard booklet. So after all, this album will be a good find for every collection of thrash, death and other brutal music. It's good enough to listen to sometimes, to be background music for your thoughts and to understand that the world needs much more to be conquered.