Lead Us!!!

Vader packs more punch into the fifteen minutes here than many bands are able to do in a whole album. Lead Us!!! (why so excited, guys?) is three intense and exceptionally amazing songs, even for Vader, and a Slayer cover that’s more redundant than.. actually nothing is more redundant than nearly every death metal band on earth having covered Raining Blood, and now Vader has done it too. Not that it’s bad, in fact it’s pretty good.. But moving on.

Every song has some really unique and cool effect to it. This is like an ep of hits, if Vader or death metal HAD hits. You ever listen to a various artists compilation and only one or two songs stand out so you want to check those bands out? Every song here is THE song from the compilation that would make you want to check out Vader.

The first song (self titled) is pretty much standard Vader. Then in the middle there’s this Krisiun-like breakdown/riffing that builds into a decent-length solo. If you’re in the center of a Vader-Krisiun venn diagram this is right up your alley. The Book whets your appetite with some classical music before laying down a ton of rolling blast beats and a catchy-turns-badass solo. The Book is kinda repetitive but it’s so fucking intense. Quintessential “rolling” death metal sound here all the way. Die!!! (again, too excited for comfort) also starts out with some classical music before turning into Vader at their most lightning fast, plus more soloing. Finishing things off is Raining Blood, which can be described the same way many other covers of this song can be: it’s a well done cover, it sounds like the band in question while doing a legendary song so how can you go wrong?, it’s been done to death but I always enjoy hearing this song in any of its thousand versions, and it’s not better than the original but by no means does it butcher this classic. Hell even my favorite band Malevolent Creation doesn’t get more praise than this for their version.

The Book is probably the best song here. It’s also my favorite off of Impressions in Blood, it doesn’t get any better than that old-school rolling death metal sound they execute flawlessly here. But every song is above and beyond from a band that only puts out top notch efforts to begin with, every Vader fan, fanatical or not needs to hear this at least once.