Deicide - Deicide
Review: A formative work of integration of theory into death metal, Deicide's self-titled album integrated the primitive musical atavism of early death metal with the ambient tendencies of atonal music, drifting more into self-defining structure than less abstract works based upon an arbitrary framework of musical value. With strips of chromatic chords thundering together in complex harmonic overlays, a lack of key centric composition, destructive atonal lightspeed guitar solos and roaring umbrage of vocal torment expressing the archest of blasphemies, Deicide created an aesthetic to match the structure of music reflecting a meta-ideology that emphasized the similarities between musical construction and philosophical exploration of the postmodern state of nihilism and misanthropic despair through composition fashioned from freely allocated and recombinated vector indicative note sequences, a statement of hopelessness to conventional composers.
Vocals barked in the hoarse cough of Glen Benton, administerer of blasphemy, and highly metaphorical lyrics about the nature of self and will in an egoless and essentially unconcerned universe, chase and intensify the rhythms of each phrase and drive further energy into the endurance beating of the primal rhythm propelling each song. The crosscut of extreme guitar and thunder of barre chords sliding home rides over the changing and dissolving riffs of high speed tremelo, fluttering melodic within bassthrob with the subtlety of avalanche. Centering revolves around able percussion that mercurial stays in clipping encyclic beats or jumps through fractions to reach a threshing gallop; the subtleties of fill and complementary rhythms is well managed and inspirationally coherent with the motion at the essence of each song.
Seemingly almost idiotic for its roving simple riffing and the comedy of theatrical Satanic vocals, or for the drifting and schizophrenic guitar solos that strike tonelessness into the heart of tone, or even just for the relentlessness of verse and chorus vocal rhythms, the music of Deicide proves its beauty when its structure (as broadcast through the riff, point of all association in the tradition of metal bands) reveals the clarity of divergent elements unified in the conclusion of their precepts, often in nihilistic recursion: in moments of clarity one can see the diligent and artistic process of conception as a means of addressing an unsatisfying reality work as communication to liberate the entrapped minds of the human sheep of earth.