Liber ZarZax

Incredible that this death metal classic doesn’t have a review yet. The demise of Centurian is a tragic loss…

The two main men and driving force behind this band were guitarist Rob Oorthuis and drummer Wim van der Valk. Van der Valk’s previous band Inquisitor released two very strong demos and then a speed-thrash-death demon of a full-length: “Walpurgis – Sabbath of lust” (read the reviews on the archives!). Centurian kind of arose from the ashes of Inquisitor.
In my opinion this album, Centurian’s final masterpiece “Liber ZarZax”, exceeds both the Inquisitor album and the two first releases by Centurian. Indeed Centurian may not be lifting fast death metal to new levels, but their execution of pure blasting death metal fire is excellent! Centurian plays in a style somewhere between Altars of madness-era Morbid Angel and Krisiun. The band is not ashamed of this: on their demo “Of purest fire” (later released as a mcd by Full Moon Productions) they do a well performed version of “Blasphemy”, quite a bit faster actually than the masters themselves! Technically Morbid Angel may be just one notch up ahead, but this album makes up with its ferocious speed and rhythm of the songs. It’s a head banging beast of rage.

The drumming is fantastic: different blast beats alternate and over this organic layer Van der Valk beats his drum kit to shit! The patterns change very quickly but evolve naturally. With his punishing strokes and controlled, yet inextricable chaos he incinerates demons and devils and evokes new ones all the same!
Guitars are not as up front and solos not as abundant as Krisiun, but the total sound of Centurian is – as a result – maybe even more coherent. Very adequate riffing and hacking by Oorthuis/Van Paradijs enhance the force of evil unleashed by Van der Valk.
Since their previous album “Choronzonic chaos gods” bass player Patrick Boleij and Seth van der Loo devote all their time to Severe Torture. Seth is a drummer but delivered the vocals for Centurian (very well!) on the demo and the debut. Jerry Brouwer does vocals and bass on Liber ZarZax: his death grunt is very powerful and sometimes even understandable without the lyric sheet.

The album itself is in total symmetry: it starts off with the extremely brutal and enchanting track “The reading (ZarZax unto Zax)” after which four more speed demons attack you. The centerpiece “Feeding flesh to the vortex” is a slower, pounding instrumental work of carnage. I do not totally adore it, but one must admit that it’s a kind of welcome moment of thought and reverberation… but then it drags you mercilessly into the other half of the album: five more dead black nuclei which beat you to DEAD relentlessly!

The cover follows the concept of the initial “Of purest fire” demon/pentagram again, but this time Oorthuis left the final workout to the famous Jacek Wisniewski. His computer drawing may be very slick and drawing immediate attention, it’s too bad however that the brooding darkness of the Choronzonic cover is absent… well at least no real blood had to flow for this one. But blood will flow when listening to Liber ZarZax! No death metal collection is complete without this outrageous beast of an album.