Dechristianize

Vital Remains have always been an icon in the death metal genre, known for releasing albums containing such evil and vehemently satanic music. Their entire discography include albums of pure, heavy, aggressive masterpieces, with a new singer appearing on each album, sounding as brutal and wicked as the previous one. Dawn Of The Apocalypse was pretty impressive, featuring amazing songs with an amazing death metal singer, Thorn. The album that followed Dawn Of The Apocalypse continued the impressive work of Tony Lazaro and Dave Suzuki, and they revolutionized their sound during the turn of the century.

Three years later, Vital Remains decided to release this extremely chaotic beast, called Dechristianize. The title already catches your attention; DECHRISTIANIZE! What an awesome name for the aggressive album it is, and based on the title and the interesting cover, you can already tell that it's a very blasphemous album! The album features the same musical elements of the previous album, Dawn Of The Apocalypse, except this album has two differences: the guitar solos are superior and the songs have much more intensity built into them. Songs like Infidel, the title song, and Devoured Elysium are incredibly fast.

The instrumentation of this album sounds truly amazing. Dave Suzuki, yet again, contributed to most of the instrumentation. He played lead guitar, bass, drums, and acoustic solos on Entwined By Vengeance. Dave's drumming was unbelievably fast and super technical, making listeners wonder if it's possible for a person to play that technical. Dave does the most impressive job on drums on the songs Infidel, Devoured Elysium, Rush Of Deliverance, and Entwined By Vengeance. And Dave's guitar solos were completely flawless on this album, since they became more melodic and more like neoclassical elements were added to them. Dave Suzuki's shredding and neoclassical-influenced solos and sweeps, which are heard in front of Tony Lazaro's heavy and brutal riffs, sound really beautiful every time. At this point in Vital Remains' career, their music contains no more of that sinister atmosphere in the music as heard on their first three albums, but their music now contains songs packed with skull-crushing riffs, quick blast-beats, and, what seems to be, endless brutality! They've completely changed at this point, but it was a positive transformation.

Glen Benton of Deicide did vocal duties for Dechristianize, performing a very powerful vocal job on every song. Even though I'm not a fan of Glen Benton at all, his vocals sounded perfect on this masterpiece. He definitely did his best in sounding completely monstrous. In fact, his vocals sounded way better on Dechristianize than any of the Deicide albums he put out around this time in his career! And as for his high-pitched screeches, he did the best job on Dechristianize than any screech he ever did with Deicide! I got shivers from his screams on the song Infidel.

Of course, there are tons of albums out there that are not Completely perfect, and unfortunately Dechristianize is one of those albums. This album is a truly a masterpiece, but there are a couple flaws on this album that keep me from giving it a perfect rating of 100 percent. The first flaw is the lyrics. I'm not saying the lyrics are a flaw because they talk about anti-christianity and satanism, but they're a flaw because they aren't written in a way that fits the music, with the exception of the title song. The lyrics don't flow well with the music at all, and they have absolutely no rhythm as you read them. The second flaw is some of the songs become very dull easily, especially if you listen to the album for more than ten minutes.

Overall, this album is a masterpiece, and definitely the best metal album that ever came out in 2003. Glen Benton did an excellent vocal job, most of the songs are awesome, and Dave's guitar solos and drumming are very impressive. The best songs are Let The Killing Begin, Dechristianize, Infidel, Devoured Elysium, and Entwined By Vengeance. This album deserves a score of 90 out of 100.