Six Tape

If we were to play a guessing game, and I gave you the following hints: 'melodic', 'Sweden' and 'female vocalist', I honestly couldn't blame you for thinking of an answer starting with m- and ending with -elodeath. So what if I'm gonna surprise you... partly?

Decadence have been around for almost twenty years now, even surviving a split, and can count on a small but loyal fan base. I, for one, am only familiar with their penultimate effort Undergrounder, which proved to be somewhat of a little grower. We're talking about melodic thrash here, with relatively low emphasis on riffs and a heavy reliance on those recurrent lead harmonies (think of modern Kreator, or, huh, melodic death), and while main man Kenneth Lantz is no Sami Yli-Sirniö, neat songs popped up every now and then ('Steam City', 'Underground'). Still, not much to justify its high average rating on M-A. So here I am, hoping their 6th offer Six Tape will stand out.

While Decadence's main selling point, visually, is undoubtedly frontwoman Kitty Saric, her actual voice is also the most interesting feature of the band. She's capable of letting out these harsh (or whiny, depending on your tastes) shrieks like the later Chuck Schuldiner (also the diction is sometimes similar), with only a marginal similarity to Angela Gossow; curiously enough, she sounds rather virile in her middle register as well, more like a cross between a more acid version of Zetro not fully morphed into a frog meets recent Tom Angelripper (the verses of 'Something More' sound taken straight out of a '00s Sodom song). I won't lie and say that she doesn't get on my nerves sometimes, like for her pronounciation (that 'No restric-tieeens! Free expres-sieeens!' in the opener is the best example), her excessive emphasis to almost every last syllable, or even some occasional grating highs (e.g. 'Latex Rituals'), but she's more than solid overall.

Not much has changed from Undergrounder, which was their first post-reunion effort: the highest paced thrash you get is on tracks like 'Red Façade Hotel' and, most of all, 'Exposure' (which, not casually, was one of my favourites), and, even there, you get these inevitable guitar sequences making it more digestible (again, not unlike Gods of Violence). Otherwise, I'm pretty sure songs like 'Trinity' could have appeared on a melodeath album of the more commercial variety without anybody raising an eyebrow. More generally, ambition is not the primary engine in Decadence, and guest drummer Lawrence Dinamarca (Manticora, Loch Vostok among others) arguably wasn't asked for his most challenging performance to date. 'In Natura' marks the perfect blend of all the influences, riffs and pre-chorus acceleration especially – all in all, the second half, groovy closer excluded (though its chorus is the closest we get to a catchy one), turned out to be the more enjoyable.

Long-running underground bands like Decadence are always admirable, and if they can still help spreading the passion for a genre, then by all means they're more than welcome; still, once you get past the vocalist novelty, on Six Tape there is hardly something that will amaze you. Notwithstanding all these similarities to Gods of Violence, not least the almost inevitable alternation between a fast song and a slow one, it never ends up being as memorable as the Kreator output, whether you liked it or not. I did, and Six Tape actually made me want to listen to it one more time.

-review written for the 8th Diamhea Memorial Review Challenge – may you rest in peace, Chris.