The Beast

To say that I was slightly looking forward to this album might give a sense of misguided disappointment when you're through reading this review.

Put it this way. I'd been introduced to the band with the customary "bigger/ better than Slayer" and their reputation as the biggest band to come out of Poland ever. Musicwise, I'd started off with the thrashy deathfest that was 'Revelations', liking it a bit I sought out more, and got hold of Litany which completely and utterly owned my soul for the first 6 or 7 songs before bludgeoning me to death with the sheer repetativeness of each and every song using the same old formula again and again.

It's this problem in my opinion that plagues the overall sound of this, the latest Vader album. They, or more to the point Piotr, seem most content to just simply sit back and rely on the same monolithic big monstrous riffs and rhythms that may well destroy, but are nothing more than an everyday occurance in a Vader song but begin to seriously blur into one formulaeic lump.

To put it another way, Vader sound as though they're either bored playing this kind of music, or they're happy treading water and resting on their proverbial laurels as opposed to actually providing fans with music to reiterate their position at the supposed top of their game.

Most reviews, even those insipid ones written by myself, usually find at least one song to pick up on and recommend as one amongst a bad bunch... but quite frankly, just as much as the latter half of Litany blurs together, practically all the songs on this album sound alike and very much stoic. So I guess it'd be a case of love one song & love them all, or hate one song & hate them all.


Vader need to stop treading water with the blatant filler material that this album largely consists of, and start releasing more of the music filled with the attitude that gave them the accolades of the huge band that they can be on their day.

Maybe they missed Doc and that through them off their rhythm, or maybe they just had a bad day.
Either way, this is way short of the high standard you can usually expect from one of the biggest bands in European (non-melodic) death metal of the 90s and current times.