Monument of the End

Sweden is a country with a huge impact on metal scene, especially death metal, and I don't mean just melodic death metal (with its fameous gottenburg school), but also technical death metal. Flagholders of swedish technical death metal were all known maniacs Spawn of Possession and when they retired many thought that Soreption will step in their shoes. Well, in my opinion, they managed to do so.

When listening to Soreption I have a feeling that they are doing what I expected Decapitated should do if they stayed in direction from their early albums. And this is technical death metal based on groovy guitar riffs and double bass drumming. The whole album consists of tehnichal riffs groovy as hell. This is supreme riff mastery. Just listen to the opening riff of Architects of the Apocalipse - you just can't resist to start slaming all around. All tracks are consistent, based on nice flowing tehnical riffs, around 4 minutes long and none of them is boring. There is not much guitar wankery and almost no clean guitars, just high quality and on tehnical riffs based death metal. Another pick of the album is drum work - Tony Westermark did a really good job. He is playing with double bass pedal lika a little kid plays with his favorite toy, it seems like he can do anything with those pedals. In combination with a guitar riff mastery of Mikael Almgren on guitar the only possible result is a very catchy and groovy death metal.

Vocal and bass are not in the foreplan, but far from being bad. Everything is where it should be. I should also mention artwork of the album, especially beautiful cover.

The only bad side of this album is maybe its lenght - I really wish two or three more tracks, because all of them are on such a high level and so enjoyable. If you like groovy and straight forward tehnical death metal with massive tehnical guitar riffs, but without solo wankery, combined with superb drumming, you shoud really check this out. With this one Soreption managed to put out their monument of modern tehnical death metal.

Standout songs: Arhitects of the Apocalipse, Nothingness Becoming, The Anti-Present