Published: 15 Apr 2025
Slaughter Of The Soul
- Release date: 1995
- Genres: Melodic Death Metal
- Rating: 2/5
Stepping into this album many years later, long enough for it garner a critical reception and to be an album endlessly inspired by and ripped off from, one can’t help but react to the reputation that precedes it on top of the album itself. Without said reputation, I’d happily write this off as a decent, if unspectacular record that starts strong and peters out quickly - but this is precisely why the acclaim baffles me. The album is clearly aiming for a very particular, precise sound that is simultaneously straightforward, aggressive yet melodic - it feels very thrash-adjacent in that respect, all taking shape thanks to the melodic riffing, the sharp punk-esque drumming and the harsh-yet-comprehensible growls. It works extremely well during the “expectation-setting” phase, with the musical template being fully fleshed out within the first two songs, yet the repetition in sound ages extremely quickly and contrives to make a 35 minute album overstay its welcome with said lack of variety - the musical template is so stripped down and so rigid that subsequent tracks are just worse rehashes, and the few musical gimmicks the band do try are simply not enough.
I’m sure at the time - especially given the legion of imitators and inspiration this album has brought, this felt like a breath of fresh air relative to the metal of the time, but where do you go from here?
Best Tracks: Blinded By Fear, Slaughter Of The Soul
