From Glory to Infinity

I don't think Faust is trying to play a brutal death style ala Morbid Angel, Death, and Deicide in any way shape or form, as the previous reviewer believes. This album sounds wholly unAmerican. Instead, Sweden appears to have influenced Faust the most. I don't know how you could listen to this and not believe this is death metal straight out of the early Swedish melodic black/death play book. Part of the reason for the melodic nature, as opposed to a brutal one, may be due to Aleister's involvement with Ancient, a fairly well known melodic back metal band. Where he drew his inspiration, though, is beside the point that this is some great melodic death metal.

One is immediately sucked into a maelstrom of hyper tremoloed guitar riffs and blast beats on Purple Children, and this hypnotic trend is largely sustained throughout the rest of the album. Periodically, things will slow down, and nice little acoustic numbers will provide breaks. But while on the whole fairly intense, the sound here is not obtrusive or heavy, just down tuned a bit to give it that death metal feel. Simply put, the production is anything but annoying and quite easy on the ears.

The instruments are handled excellently, but that's also because they're in good hands. Besides Aleister and fellow guitarist Ghiulz Borroni, we have Steve DiGiorgio providing, as always, some amazing bass lines. In the drum department, Darek "Daray" Brzozowski lays down some precise double bass and blast beats. Solos are frequent and quite enjoyable to listen to. As is the sound in general, they're also quite melodic. The vocals are fairly standard, but compliment the music nicely, instead of overpowering it.

Faust is a pretty old band, forming in 1992, but they've just now gotten around to recording their first full length. I don't know what took them so long, but better late than never, as this is a very solid, if not outstanding debut album. It's unfortunate they don't seem to be that well known.