Antichrist

Words... was one of the biggest surprises for me in 2005. I was completely blown away by the experimental attack of vicious death metal with the blackened atmosphere. Almost perfect and hard to top that album was.

Sadly this one is not on par with it. The soft and muddy guitar sound fails to give the chills Words.. did, and the drums are way back in the mix. Now that is a bummer because David Gray, one of the best metal drummers around, has reached his peak on this one. He reaches insane speeds almost instantly, comes back with a mind fucking technical break, then goes on to try some new records. Mendonca's clean vocals are ethereal as always but let's face it, he has never been a powerful growler, or a good screamer. He gets the job done though. The acoustic breaks are great except one thing, blastbeats behind clean guitar tones just shouldn't be done. Period. There is a bit of an electronic experimenting here but doesn't add much to the album, doesn't hurt either.

This one could easily have been a contender for the album of the year, but the production hurts it a lot. Whether the muddy guitar tone was a conscious decision on their part or just some unwanted production fuck-up doesn't concern me. It's simply bad. Still a solid effort from these masterful Brits.