With their gore/horror imagery and particularly brutal brand of death metal during the 90s,
Broken Hope remained more or less in the shadow of
Cannibal Corpse with which they shared the same label, the mighty
Metal Blade Records, even if they were not treated quite the same. The
Metal Blade era led to a reissue followed by three albums,
The Bowels of Repugnance and
Loathing which in my opinion are the most memorable. Dumped by their record label, the Chicago-based group released a last, rather good, album in 1999 that went relatively unnoticed, before throwing in the towel following the split between the group's two heavyweights Brian
Griffin and
Jeremy Wagner, not to mention the death of the formidable growler Joe Ptacek in 2010 which crushed all hope of the group possibly getting back together.
Without Brian
Griffin who has definitively left the group to this day,
Jeremy Wagner nonetheless put
Broken Hope back together in
2012 with the help of former bassist Shaun
Glass. The two formed a quintet with frontman Tom Leski, the former guitarist/vocalist for the incredible
Gorgasm, a staple of the post-2000 American brutal death metal scene. After signing a spanking new deal with
Century Media, and releasing an album mainly written by
Jeremy and devilishly illustrated by Wes Benscoter (
Sinister,
Mortician), the group undertook a lengthy tour with
Deicide and became one of the big hits of the fall of 2013.
Wickedly dubbed
Omen of Disease,
Broken Hope's sixth offering blasts out of the gates with the powerful Womb of Horrors followed by the excellent track Ghastly, which is without a doubt one of the best of the group's career. The rest of the album is perhaps a bit less noteworthy after those openers, but it goes the distance thanks to the quality of the songwriting and the interpretation as well as the violence of tracks such as Rendered into
Lard, with its murderous riffs and head-spinning accelerations, not to mention carefully crafted guitar solos. The good re-recording of Incinerated, from the first album
Swamped in Gore, points to the extent of the group's progress since 1991. Moreover, while one of the line-up's ultimate weapons was once Joe 'Eusophagus' Ptacek with one of the deepest voices in the business along with
Mortician's
Will Rahmer, Tom Leski perfectly picked up the torch with his thick guttural singing style that works well without being exaggerated and jibes ideally with
Jeremy Wagner's shredding compositions.
In the fall of 2013,
Broken Hope made a successful return on the scene with a good compromise between an old school sound coupled with more modern parameters that placed them solidly within the current American brutal death metal landscape while avoiding overly technical twists and putting the accent on full frontal riffs.
Omen of Disease is one of the best of the year and one of the most accomplished along with
The Bowels of Repugnance and
Loathing. Let's hope that the tour that followed, which was particularly heated due to
Deicide frontman Glen Benton's tantrums, did not wear down our group from Chicago.
Fabien.
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