Mater of All Evil

Most of the people particularly fond of this album (and this band in general) appear to be Italian; I mean, I understand rooting for your hometown heroes and everything, but I don't see the charm here at all. I kind of understand where the fans are coming from; Necrodeath was a late '80s group and ostensibly one of the more formational bands in the Italian extreme metal scene, and this is the band's first album after a decade-long absence, but frankly 'Mater Of All Evil' just isn't very good. It's capable and listenable enough but completely unmemorable and generic at the same time. This is exactly the sort of album that I can't bring myself to hate but at the same time will probably listen to twice more after this review is done. In other words, it's exactly the sort of thing that should be on Pavement.

This is a death metal album that is really only super overdriven thrash metal; influences from old Death and Possessed are present along with a little updating in the form of some more melodic passages reminiscent of the old Swedish scene with modern playing technique and production. The screeching, throaty vocals and somewhat thin, trebly guitar tone give a mild black metal touch to the proceedings, but in essence this is a pure death/thrash album that seems roughly untouched from the sound established by the band in the '80s. I'm sure this is a ringing endorsement for some, but merely being oldschool has never been enough to keep my attention. To the band's credit, the songs are fairly complex, with a lot of riffs and different melodic and rhythmic ideas going into each, but the trouble is that none of them are very good and most of the tracks here sound like they were written in a few hours despite their latent complexity.

There's a lot of small things to criticize; the kind of arrhythmic, silly vocal performance which has too much thrash yowl to be taken seriously, the kind of repetitious and overly traditional riffs, and the kind of weird, overly echoey drum production, but none of this cuts to the core of why this is a weak album. 'Mater Of All Evil' isn't a release crippled by a fundamental lack of songwriting talent, instrumental incompetence, or a single element that overtakes the rest of the music, but just a rather plain variety of mediocrity. I'm perhaps not the best person to be reviewing such an album, but really, do even dedicated and single-minded oldschool death metal fans find this very engaging? I've heard all these ideas before, expressed in better and more ambitious ways, so why would I listen to this, even for nostalgia or bread-and-butter listening? There's just too much out there.

I suppose I could be missing something fundamental about this release but I don't think I do; this is rather designed for those who are just looking for oldschool death metal than anything particularly unique or engaging. I suppose if you have a 'Scream Bloody Gore' shirt somewhere in your closet you'll enjoy this, but as someone without that garment, I have to give this a pass.