Burn After Reaping

This album is the band's sophomore release and by god it's a huge improvement from the last album. The production quality is obviously much better, near perfection, and the band seems to have found a perfect hold on how to make brutal death metal. This album definitely appeals to all kinds of metal heads. The band is classified as death metal and rightly so, but some songs, such as Deatholution, Kingdom of Thoughts, and Finger On the Trigger, contain an element of melody and groovieness.

The vocalist can growl deep as hell, scream like a pterodactyl and everything in between. Their are no clean vocals whatsoever but the songs never go over the top with brutality. The sound is something that appeals to fans of In Flames or Cannibal Corpse alike.

The music is very catchy. The drums have periods of quick bursts but all in a easy-to-follow way along with some blast beats and moments where he just beats the hell out of the drums to keep a fast pace. The guitar is very catchy and uses several different distortions to create an interesting sound. Guitar solos however, are few and far between, and not all too great. Other than on the song Deatholution, the bass is not very recognizable, but this doesn't do much to hamper the sound the band produces.

To sum it up... Burn After Reaping is a brutal sounding album dominated by low death growls but with some screeches thrown in as well. The lyrical themes can be kind of ridiculous as you can see just from looking at the song titles, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This album also contains some groovy and melodic tones to it though, which is seen mostly in the guitar work.

Definitely a great album for all metal heads to pick up. To get a sense of how good the band can sound start with the songs I've mentioned throughout the review. Hackneyed can definitely be considered a more progressive offshoot of bands such as Suffocation and other brutal German bands, and they will probably be a spearhead to introduce bands such as Suffocation to those that don't necessarily listen to much brutal death metal.