Doomsday X

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!

That’s pretty much the reaction to Doomsday X because of how uneven it is between its best cuts and its least inspired cuts. Basically, Malevolent Creation found a pretty steady formula to go off on during the 2000s that doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination. I guess, after their experimentation with slower song structures in The Fine Art of Murder, they realized that it’s just easier to go full blasty death/thrash. Makes sense since that’s what they’ve been good at since Eternal. But since The Fine Art of Murder, they’ve been on autopilot – some bits sound cool and there’s some cool riffs here and there, plus the songs have the kind of fury to them that would really get the pit going at a concert. But nothing on Warkult or The Will to Kill will ever count for shit compared to anything on The Ten Commandments and Eternal.

But Doomsday X is different. Not entirely different, of course – it’s still death thrashing mayhem and our old pal Fasciana can still throw out some sick solos to fan the flames of said death thrashing mayhem. But during the best cuts, you can find a band that sounds totally revitalized. For instance, “Cauterized” opens the album with an atomic explosion of solos and riffs while Culross pounds away with destructive precision. Ditto for the closer “Bio-Terror”. Hell, even the lesser cuts have that vibe going for them as they are at least not as lazily put together as the songs on the few prior albums were. Unfortunately, given the boneheaded style at play here, at nearly 50 minutes long – and even the band acknowledge this – this album’s just a weeeeee bit too long.

Basically, the songs start to run together after a while. The opening three songs come barreling into frame with some totally destructive compositions and they wind up wrecking all sorts of shit – although with “Deliver My Enemy”, Malevolent Creation have been taking notes from Iron Maiden with how often Hoffmann goes “deliver my enemy” for the chorus. Anyway, the other songs ride the same wave, spending a few or so minutes each blasting and thrashing away with the odd thrash break and fiery solo to keep things from being this wall of noise. But it doesn’t have enough fuel to power twelve songs. After “Deliver My Enemy”, the riffs start to lose the magic and the music starts just sounding more and more like this wall of noise. Like, they blast and thrash like the first three songs, but the riffs don’t have as much fire and the songs don’t hit as hard. Don’t get me wrong, these are technically good songs, but there are a lot of those out there that are also interesting to listen to, which these just aren’t.

There are exceptions – instrumental “Prelude to Doomsday” with its precise blast beating and tornado of solos; “Strength in Numbers” with its keen sense of pacing that (ironically) allows the tremelo picking to breathe and eek out a memorable tune; and “Bio-Terror” with its sheer violence. Songs like this show that when push comes to shove, Malevolent Creation can still bang out some fucking good tunes. These are the songs that make Doomsday X worth the time of day. What lets it down is that half the album falls into the same “in one ear, out the other” trap a lot of death/thrash often does. It makes Doomsday X one of the more frustrating albums in Malevolent Creation’s back catalog (the only one that’s even comparable is Stillborn, which was them spreading their thrash wings into a rushed, uninspired and ultimately boring album), but honestly, it’s also the best that they’ve come out with in about a decade. With more inspired riffs and a reinvigorated sense of violence in their compositions, despite some bloat, Doomsday X comes off well.