A Vision of Misery

Sadus is the kind of band that never fails at amaze me. There are lots of reasons, like their techincal hability, the exciting nature of their music, the sheer catchiness that manages to keep the listener wondering "Damn, what's coming now"?

"A Vision of Misery" shows the band's progress in a direction I didn't like, which culminated at "Elements of Anger". This is the border between their older style and the newer one, more midpaced and with more emphasis on techinique. The midpaced moments are more prevalent here than in "Chemical Exposure" or even "Swallowed in Black".

Their hability to write some of the greatest riffs ever is intact. The riffs here are of two kinds: The slower, more complex riffs where their techinical side is shown. These riffs are interesting for the most part, except where they seem to drag a bit (for example, "Facelift" clocking at 7 minutes). The other variety is that one with the burning fast DM riffs, which are simpler but very effective at giving catchiness to the songs. For example, at 2:21 of the fourth track. This riff is as banal as "Outbreak of Evil" but extremely efficient. Of course they know that a full display of complex riffs detracts from the entretaining value of the album, so they throw some great breaks, cool drumming patterns and fills and some nice solos. The song structures are also pretty nice, staying ayaw from verse-chorus-verse. The musicians seem to understand each other very well, so it's not hard for them to write songs like "Slave to Misery" and "Through the Eyes of Greed".

The instruments are all great togheter, although Steve's bass isn't nearly as prevalent as in the previous album. But whenever he shows up, his talent is glaring. The drumming has mostly the same style of extremely fast snare-bass drum patterns, double-bass and some shot fills. Pretty damn good, if you ask me. There are much less blastbeats than "Chemical Exposure", if any.

It's maybe the last essential Sadus album. The next one, it's hard for me to say, is pretty boring. Go get this one now, no matter how hard is to find an out-of-print album.