Vorum- Poisoned Void
Deja-fucking-vu.
It's 2013 and the Old School Death Metal Revival, or Aping depending on your perspective, continues full steam ahead with Vorum's Poisoned Void, a short and succinct blitzkrieg of "Old School is the only School" Death Metal. It's an album, which as to be expected, throws a bunch of different obvious influences at you and does so with aplomb.
Everyone, pull out your check lists:
Does it have blacked, blast heavy bits of furious Death Metal ala Angelcorpse? Check
Does it have Doom-laden, chunky riffs for skull cracking ala Autopsy or Asphyx? Check it off.
Does it have tons of melodic solos and leads ala every Death Metal band from the late 80's and early 90s? Check and check.
Does it have lurching tremolo picked abominations ala Incantation? You better fucking believe Check.
Does it have vocals which sound like John Tardy or Martin Van Drunen? There's a big fucking Check there buddy.
Poisoned Void is basically text book when it comes to modern Old School Death Metal Worship, moving from influence to influence with speed and prowess, something I have to give it some credit for. With some many of these recent worship albums feeling lazy and passionless, Poisoned Void remains highly aggressive and energetic throughout, and the bands musicianship is top notch and tight. On a basic technical level, musicianship and production, Poisoned Void delivers the goods.
Where it simply doesn't deliver is in the song-writing department, as throughout Poisoned Void you are taunted with moments of pure, head-banging, spine snapping, furiously flailing awesome, only to be smashed back down to earth with another redundant bit of generic blasting and riffing which sounds like the same transition from song to song. Take for example the intro to "Rabid Blood": it's fucking awesome, with some slower tempos and fantastic drumming which shows the skill that the bands talented drummer, Mikko Josefsson, is capable of. He is one of the highlights on this record, displaying incredible speed and dexterity as well as the ability to play some very complex rhythms. But like, well, every other song on the record, "Rabid Blood" becomes a generic, time a dozen amalgamation of various played out "old-skull" tropes that never ascend to the next level, and it feels like Josefsson's talents are being wasted here. It's the same with "Thriving Darkness," a killer intro followed by two brilliant sections which channels early Morbid Angel in all their Ancient glory... before it too falls into a relentless rut of basic old-school stuff that just makes one yawn. In fact, we should rename Poisoned Void to Awesome Intros, Boring Results, as this proves to be a consistent theme throughout the record.
Not to be too harsh here, for as far as blatant old school worship albums go, Poisoned Void is not bad. Although it lacks much of the strong atmosphere of Ectovoid's Fractured in the Timeless Abyss, and it's simply devoid of that wonderful spark of creativity and originality that Execration achieved on Odes to the Occult, Poisoned Void is very furious and is guaranteed to get ones head-banging on more than one occasion. Vorum avoid most of the major prat-falls that can make this style almost completely unlistenable: boring and pointless Funeral Doom segments are thankfully absent, and Vorum prefer to keep things short and violent, with songs rarely going over the four minute mark. As much as elements of this album infuriate me with it's utterly generic moments, there is just enough here for it to rise above the utter shit that the Old School Death Metal Revival has produced. It's worth a listen, but when the history of this era of Death Metal is written, Poisoned Void will be little more than a footnote in the annals of time.
Rating: 6.5/10
Poisoned Void is basically text book when it comes to modern Old School Death Metal Worship, moving from influence to influence with speed and prowess, something I have to give it some credit for. With some many of these recent worship albums feeling lazy and passionless, Poisoned Void remains highly aggressive and energetic throughout, and the bands musicianship is top notch and tight. On a basic technical level, musicianship and production, Poisoned Void delivers the goods.
Where it simply doesn't deliver is in the song-writing department, as throughout Poisoned Void you are taunted with moments of pure, head-banging, spine snapping, furiously flailing awesome, only to be smashed back down to earth with another redundant bit of generic blasting and riffing which sounds like the same transition from song to song. Take for example the intro to "Rabid Blood": it's fucking awesome, with some slower tempos and fantastic drumming which shows the skill that the bands talented drummer, Mikko Josefsson, is capable of. He is one of the highlights on this record, displaying incredible speed and dexterity as well as the ability to play some very complex rhythms. But like, well, every other song on the record, "Rabid Blood" becomes a generic, time a dozen amalgamation of various played out "old-skull" tropes that never ascend to the next level, and it feels like Josefsson's talents are being wasted here. It's the same with "Thriving Darkness," a killer intro followed by two brilliant sections which channels early Morbid Angel in all their Ancient glory... before it too falls into a relentless rut of basic old-school stuff that just makes one yawn. In fact, we should rename Poisoned Void to Awesome Intros, Boring Results, as this proves to be a consistent theme throughout the record.
Not to be too harsh here, for as far as blatant old school worship albums go, Poisoned Void is not bad. Although it lacks much of the strong atmosphere of Ectovoid's Fractured in the Timeless Abyss, and it's simply devoid of that wonderful spark of creativity and originality that Execration achieved on Odes to the Occult, Poisoned Void is very furious and is guaranteed to get ones head-banging on more than one occasion. Vorum avoid most of the major prat-falls that can make this style almost completely unlistenable: boring and pointless Funeral Doom segments are thankfully absent, and Vorum prefer to keep things short and violent, with songs rarely going over the four minute mark. As much as elements of this album infuriate me with it's utterly generic moments, there is just enough here for it to rise above the utter shit that the Old School Death Metal Revival has produced. It's worth a listen, but when the history of this era of Death Metal is written, Poisoned Void will be little more than a footnote in the annals of time.
Rating: 6.5/10
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