Let Us Pray

A pretty good picture of how a band will sound can be gleaned from both where and when they came from, and a death metal band surfacing for their first LP in the early 90s in New England will probably have a difficult time avoiding comparison to the heavily consequential New York scene. This scene mostly draws a contrast with their Florida rivals in terms of depth, atmosphere, and overall distance from the thrash metal scene (which is quite a bit further away), thus resulting in a sound that is a bit more murky, distorted, and is a bit more overt in its occultic lyrical pursuits than even the more anti-religion affiliates down south in Morbid Angel and Deicide respectively. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to completely lump Vital Remains into the same group as Incantation and Immolation, especially insofar as their highly advanced debut "Let Us Pray" is concerned.

While quite a bit darker, heavier, and more tilted towards the brutal side of the coin than Death ever came to be, there is an epic and progressive slant in this band's music that is somewhat comparable to what was heard on "Human", as well as some atmospheric quirks and melodic hooks that hint at a slight commonality with contemporary European bands. The song lengths are particularly long for a straight death metal act circa 1992, and each individual chapter in this twisted book is loaded with shifting tempos, contrasting riff ideas that meld in well with the elongated mid-tempo grooves and the occasional thrashing and blasting sections. Even the guitar tone has a somewhat higher end crunch to it that can be likened to Schuldiner's early 90s guitar sound, and the solos tend to match the wild yet restrained technical flow that dominated "Human" and "Individual Thought Patterns", as opposed to the overt King/Hanneman worship that was still heavily popular with the rest of Florida's adherents at this juncture.

But for the occasional keyboard elements that mimick the droning vocal/string character employed on Messiah's "Rotten Perish" and Darkthrone's "Soulside Journey" and the somewhat lighter atmosphere, there is a lot here that is reminiscent of the booming New York scene. The riff set isn't quite as technical as what Suffocation brought to the table on "Effigy Of The Forgotten", but there are several passages where the same flowing streams of notes and elaborate lead fills adorn the riffing during the more frenetic sections of several songs, namely that of "Of Pure Unholiness" and the monstrous thrasher "Malevolent Invocation" (one of the few shorter ones on here). The closest of the big 3 names of New York at this juncture that this resembles is that of Immolation, between the murky atmospheric aesthetic and the mostly deep and demoic vocal character of Jeff Gruslin (though he does occasionally shoot his voice up into a fairly high-pitched wail at times reminiscent of a late 80s death scream out of Schuldiner or Tardy).

This isn't quite able to supplant the wildly hailed albums that came out of New York at around this time, particularly that of "Dawn Of Possession" which is the closest to this stylistically, though this is slightly more ambitious technically. However, it does a consistent job of nipping at all of their respective heels and stands as a rather interesting compromise between two very different death metal scenes that were producing some truly horrific feats of brilliance. It's also one of those albums that is so saturated with ideas that it is pretty easy to discover something new lurking in one or two songs that wasn't really noticeable the first several times listening to it. But for a band that seems heavily obsessed with separated parts, this whole album offers a well connected set of influences resulting in one massive colossal group of extended songs that are about as far-reaching as the endless ocean of blood depicted on the cover.