Unanimated - Ancient God of Evil
Review: Life defiles purity. This is why an album can have both some of the most brilliant work in metal, and yet be awash in its greatest failings: a reversion to the mean, or to its rock music and heavy metal ancestors, abandoning what made death metal stand above the masses. A bullet racing at the surface line of white sand would produce the smooth refulgent synthesis of tones that is the slowly self-emergent melodic motif in each song, a half-symmetry of interrogation and a route back toward some tonal clarity through melding and divisive notes harmonizing their similarities in sonic shape from within the complex structure of their own internal harmonies and the rising phenomena of each song that thrust momentum to apex at the revelation of new direction in sonic motion.
However, as these hopes rise, they are brought to ground by the pull of the mass audience that loves the bouncy, color-note-infused style of heavy metal, or its speed metal updated hybrid, Pantera. This downfall manifested itself in the New Wave of Swedish Death Metal (NWOSDM) for which Ancient God of Evil is a blueprint: death metal riffs and the riff/introduction/riff pattern Slayer innovated, made into a gleaming gel that can hold suspended lots of delicious heavy metal riffs and abundant bluesy leads, so that the music is carnival-style -- one unrelated distraction after another held together by rhythm.
For those of us who like music that does not attempt to norm itself, this album is a disappointment; there are great riffs on here, and some great musical ideas, but the structure is formulaic and it quickly runs out of momentum on each track and drops into a hybrid heavy metal style that has no attention span and so is of very limited reward.