Vader - Sothis
Review: Don't buy this album, Sothis, unless you're a collector or become fanatically inspired by this article, because it's not a good deal: 3 songs and some amusement for an import price. Buy it because what it has is critical evolution of death metal, an advanced artform coming perhaps past a logical time and past the real innovations of this style, but nonetheless a unique and evocative perspective of the genre.
The great innovations that Vader make occur within three real songs on this album and in some of the intros, but definitely not in the Black Sabbath cover ("Black Sabbath").
The album opens with an intro and has an intro two tracks later and then an ambient masterpiece four tracks beyond alluding to and incorporating some of the sound-collage and ambient ideas of black metal; the intro starts with bubbling noises over dark groans and explosions, calling voices of demons in the deconstruction of a world.
The opening intro is less profound, with wheeling noise and guitar crashing underneath fairly silly chanting about the ancient ones, but it is hardly surprassed by "De Profundis," which is a trudging bass-drum time-waster.
In conclusion: Out of seven tracks, two are worthless intros; the Black Sabbath cover may be disparaged by some and is painful to listen to for vocal reasons: the vocalist can't reach and doesn't try to attain the vocal performance of Ozzy Osbourne.
The remaining three tracks (7 tracks - (3 intros + 1 cover)) are powerful death metal in Vader's characteristic fast-strumming, Slayer-esque style.
The album whose songs would compare to these would be Morbid Angel's Covenant: with fast strumming in alternating rhythms drifting in out and of synchronization with itself, and quickly switching patterns augmented by rhythmic and structural modifications, this album successfully double-tracks guitar and builds a rhythmic and melodic sense sublime beneath the powerful, evident riffs in the way Morbid Angel integrated black metal elements back in 1998.
Lead guitars are fast and noisy, often chaotic, but eerily integrate well with the motion of the music. In a distinct style, Vader have integrated the dark and melodic elements of black metal with the powerful, fast, and structural forces of death metal; for this they deserve praise, but only the brave are gonna buy this for the three real songs it has to offer.
However, in that there's the acquisition of some metal that's actually rewarding, a rarity for death metal after 1998.