Swallowed in Black

After such a devastating longplay as "Illusions", the Americans from Sadus did not throw up their hands in fear that they had exhausted the topic and 2 years later they hit with a continuation of the technical thrash/death metal majesty from their debut in the form of the second longplay entitled "Swallowed In Black". However, this succeeded because the "Swallowed..." kept the heaviness of the debut and showed that Darren Travis's band had an intention to expand earlier ideas. Even if the effect was half a point lower than the "Illusions" - a spoiler of my premature rating.

The quartet from California kept the degree of aggression from "Illusions" here, and at the same time developed this wilderness with a few more complex fragments, even crazier bass of Steve DiGiorgio, fleshy production and a little more emphasis on the death metal elements (even though there was no blasting). So the first fiddle here is still thrash metal. Well, this is in both fast (sic!) and simple shots like "In Your Face" or "Last Abide", but also in those longer songs like "Arise", "Images", "The Wake", "Oracle Of Obmission" or "Good Rid'nz", which can reach meaningfully over 4 minutes. The aforementioned couple of "more complex fragments" also work great, where the band slows down a bit, and as a compensation they exhibit excellent technical bends, with emphasis of DiGiorgio (something that will later come to Death, and in the meantime also appeared at Atheist and Cynic). Apart from that, Darren's "squeaky" vocals, hitty riffs, fast drums playing, guitar solos and general aggression bursting at every step do not disappoint either. All of this elements are perfectly maintained to the regions from the debut, and at the same time, they do not give the impression that you are dealing with a laborious duplication of previous patterns. Actually, the only minor (and somewhat forcefully pointed out here) downside is the "Swallowed..." content...is a bit too abundantly compared to the debut! After all, the second album of Sadus is 14 minutes longer than the "Illusions", and I bet that if they narrowed it down to those 35 minutes, this album would kill as discreetly as "Illusions" (from the remaining minutes they could easily make bonuses). Except that, this is still a general exaggeration defect.

Two years after the excellent "Illusions", Americans from Sadus managed to repeat the success of that album. Well, on their second lp, Darren Travis' group created music as strong as on their debut, and at the same time very inventive, but arranged a bit differently.

Originally on: https://subiektywnymetal.blogspot.com/2022/07/sadus-swallowed-in-black-1990.html