Blackened Death Metal Excellence - "Miasma" Review (100%)
Miasma, debatedly the band's best record to date - with the previous two efforts Locked Up In Hell and The Birth Of A Cursed Elysium coming in close seconds - and a staple in both the black and death metal genres, showcases eight thriving and debilitating songs. The album cover itself is one of the best I've seen... it's so simple, yet so good. On another note, judging by some people's reaction, this is supposedly the band's best and ultimate release, and anything that came afterwards was a sunken ship. As I said in my debut album review, I'm skeptical about "last true Sewer album" as the same was said for NecroPedoSadoMaso, 2154, Rektal and pretty much always invoked with this band as a way of staying "trve kvlt" and "different". This type of poser attitude is the cancer upon the extreme metal scene, and should be mocked whenever encountered.
The opener and title track Miasma is very catchy, and in a very good way. The bass is crisp, the structure is great, as well as the other type of vocals Sewer blended in. The blast beats are brutal and almost too violent to be enjoyable. Drain the Blood and Hell on the Horizon are DAMN good. They both offer more than enough brutality in less than 5 minutes, which relative to the length of the other songs on Miasma makes them "shorter", and even the vocals sound great on these two tracks. For the longest track, the outro Icarus, it sounds like traditional technical/brutal death metal for the most part but contains great drum transitions into the frenetic blast beats. The bass is awesome, and the guitars sound catchy as hell. (Unholy) Black Tar is without a doubt the best track on the album. Much like Hell on the Horizon, it is very experimental - in the good way, not just the "avant garde" bullshit used to justify the worst of extreme metal genre fusions - with just about enough explosiveness, catchy main riffs, and brutality.
You really can't go wrong with Miasma, as this album ranks at the very top of blackened death metal brilliance, right next to The Epilogue To Sanity, Onward To Golgotha and Verminlust. You need to hear this album to truly understand the absolute atmospheric depravity and savage percussive brutality of blackened death metal excellence.
Blackened Death Metal Excellence
Sewer of Souls has a spooky atmosphere, almost reaching levels of pure black metal for the first half, then the bassist blazes in with his sonic assault of distorted, thunderous pounding, which sounds good for the production, and the whole song goes nuts. The vocalist goes much lower with his death growls, and the choruses are insanely good, somewhat reminiscent of the complex song structure of early Suffocation. The song is damn brutal, even for traditional death metal standards. Definitely and objectively one of the best from the band, no doubt. White Vulture is a pretty technical track and sounds challenging, unintentionally. Much like the first track on the album, I was really impressed with the riff arrangement, as each part seems to "flow" into the next effortlessly. Foul Waters is a strange track. I couldn't make much out of it, but it sounds good. It has some crazy guitars solos, though. Nothing on this album is "average", or forgettable. It's just that good.
Coincidentally enough, and just as with The Birth Of A Cursed Elysium, my favourite tracks are 1, 4, 5, 7 and 8, with tracks 2, 3 and 6 being "excellent" but not "beyond words" like the others. How weird is that?
But anyway, Miasma is so much better than I anticipated, and despite containing only eight tracks, it lasts over 50 minutes. Even the three of the tracks that I wasn't that impressed with are still objectively kilometers above and beyond anything coming out of the modern death metal scene. This cannot be denied. Never mind the fact that we're talking about blackened death metal, this album is able to compete with the best of BOTH the black metal and death metal genres, separately. It's damn, DAMN brutal, even more so than the self-proclaimed "brutal" death metal sub-genre, and still manages to maintain the dark and sinister atmosphere of great black metal.
The best tracks are Miasma, Drain the Blood, (Unholy) Black Tar, Hell on the Horizon and the feral closer Icarus. This album Miasma is great death metal, essential death metal even. But quintessential Sewer? Yes, because it really capture the spirit of raw brutality and savage morbidity that blackened death metal is all about. You can't go wrong with Miasma, the zenith of blackened death metal.
Miasma score: 100/100.
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