SICKENING HORROR (Gre): “The Dead End Experiment” full-length Cd 2009 Soulflesh Collector

SICKENING HORROR The Dead End Experiment

I feel on discomforting ground as I can’t exactly describe the music Sickening Horror is playing on this sophomore album. It might be I haven’t been listening to much stuff lately and my writing is getting progressively rusty with time but I can’t find any acceptable resemblance to make comparisons. Even if it’s another galaxy entirely, we can imagine a cross between late Carbonized or Oxiplegatz (only to give an idea of how freaky the songwriting is) with touches of Immolation (hey there’s even Dolan doing backing vocals here on one track!) or Disincarnate here and there. Overall, it’s quite unusual for a band to reach this level of asymmetry without sounding like a patchwork of riffs (see my previous review on Deny The Urge). I won’t disregard this band as just another technical death metal project since playing skill is certainly not the end here, but a mean to create a weird sound landscape. A jagged landscape of trippy angular and dissonant Death Metal for sure, yet I can’t say all this is extremely brutal nor aggressive which is the reason I can’t really rate it astonishingly  high. Let’s face it once and for all: Death Metal is not about samba. I certainly do appreciate that these guys are able to create something unique, and I really like the fairly muddled obscure production that makes me go back to the earlier days of Disharmonic Orchestra but I prefer something a little bit more straightforward today. My best suggestion however would be to listen to the whole album before giving opinions because there’s something highly operatic working on here which can be enjoyed only in its entirety. It doesn’t happen often that I am not bothered by warped melodies and swirling solos, but here we’re on really capable hands. These guys play the only way I can actually appreciate extreme variation. This is very good work even if I am not entirely in my element. Of all the records I have reviewed recently, this might be one of the few I actually encourage you to buy.

Good things can be said about the packaging as well. The booklet is a 16 page monster with rather good lyrics worth a read (quite conceptual), and while I skipped a bit on the cover art in the beginning, I now find it fitting the concept as the whole thing has this hypnotic stile like an Origin booklet made well (and blow up my house, but I find this band more interesting that Origin as well).

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