Divide and Conquer

When assembling a savory smorgasbord of old school death metal, Cianide must have a significant portion of the plate for your hefty banquet to be nutritious and satisfying, despite the band's name sounding hazardous to your health. Trust me, this band is anything but unhealthy. The heaviest? Could be. One of the greatest? Absolutely. Unfortunately, the bulk of the death metal fiends the world over seem to forget, much too often, this important ingredient called Cianide from their nourishmental rotation. What a tragedy that is, indeed.

I'm of the opinion that Cianide may be the most underrated death metal band in all of its colorful history. Here's a band that's been around since 1988--yes, 1988! As long as nearly any death metal band you could mention, and have never split, broken up or even had any major line-up changes. Just the same two main dudes Mike and Scott playing heavy as a rotten megalodon's death metal for as long as my entire existence, doing their thing, seeking no glory, seeking no fame, yet continue to press on carrying the glorious, mighty and vigorous death metal torch with them strongly into the future. Oh yeah, and on top of that, they've created some of the most unique and spectacular music in all of metal too.

As anyone familiar with Cianide's respectably sized body of work, it comes as no surprise that they started out, interestingly, as an ugly as hell death/doom metal outfit. At a time when death/doom wasn't very common, especially in the States, Cianide was carving out their own unique niche of slow, crawling, sludgy, plodding and ugly death/doom. Sure, there were hints of Hellhammer, Asphyx and perhaps even Winter, but none of those bands adequately sum up the totality of what Cianide was doing in the early 90s. Cianide is wholly and uniquely their own, and owe alliegance to no one.

Fast forward to 2000 and Cianide is a different entity. By the time Divide and Conquer was unleashed, the bulk of their ugly, plodding death/doom lurchings had faded away abruptly for a more straightforward, yet still ultra god damn heavy, old school death metal spirit. Ripping off faster, shorter, tigher and noticeably well drummed numbers--they had sped up the tempo dials significantly. I've always wondered if the change of stylings was partly due to the addition of Andy Kuizin in 1995, a great drummer that would remain with them to this day. He certainly improved the skill Cianide yielded behind the drum kit significantly, and perhaps allowed them to play more of a style they otherwise might have cooked up much earlier. On the immediate release after Andy Kuizin joined, their abrupt stylistic shift occurred, and this makes me suspect that their earlier death/doom style was due partly to their earlier drummer's somewhat limited ability.

Divide and Conquer feels more in line with a contemporary Asphyxian style of death metal circa the late 2000s, but with a fuller, heavier and bassier production. Mr. Perun (who I've had the pleasure of meeting, great dude it seems) thunders forth the vocals with a grumpy bottom-heavy bark. The bulk of the instrumental material on Divide and Conquer drive and groove forward with a devastatingly heavy and angry ferocity, carrying the weight of mountains with them as they do so. Divide and Conquer (as well as most all Cianide material) is surprisingly riffy and deliberately structured around a handful of varying sections cycling in repetition. The songwriting is concise and lean, and none of them overstay their welcome.

Cianide is a band that deserves far more recognition than they've been able to garner in their long and gruesome career. They have easily morphed into one of my all time favorite bands that I continue to revisit repeatedly and frequently. The quality of Divide and Conquer is very high, and as high as this album is, still isn't the best that Cianide has produced. For that, check A Descent into Hell for their death/doom opus, and for their later style of ferociously and impossibly heavy old school death metal, Hell's Rebirth is the best. However, don't let this discourage you from trying out their entire discography because Cianide's entire catalogue is of superb quality, including this one here.