Decaying
Encirclement

Trench metal is what it is about when finnish death metal band Decaying return with their second album, and that is their second album in less than half a year. It seems like they are working fast, but why not? I think that their debut was primitive death metal made really well and showing lots of promise for the future, I reviewed that album in october. So what has changed more than the year? Well, first of all the cover art looks better than the debut album so in that the album looks quite interesting, they continue naming their albums in a one word approach. Their songs are again long and the lyrics seems centred around the same area of interest as well. After all it is the same band and there is probably not much that changes in the short timeframe since the debut but the band has more experience with one album behind them now so that might as well speak for this album being better. At the same time, a very short amount of time has passed since the debut and in that time they have recorded and released a new album, that might be something that speaks against the band and of course that it is the difficult second album.

The devastating and vile riffs erupting from the speakers are more infectious than a bayonet wound, while the epic melodic harmonies reflect the anguished feeling of facing certain death over the enemy lines. The drums pound out heavy, strong blasts like 150mm shells fired from the sky and Matias Nastolin’s booming roar are ferocious as ever, that is how their music is described by the PR-people and it is an okay description I would say. For you who lack imagination I would say that we recognise the same kind of brutal death metal as before, only more of it with well over an hour’s playing time, the same kind of epic riffing and the same kind of brutal growling but maybe with slightly more variation than on the debut album. In many regards it is a logical continuation of the debut album but it can also be seen as a second disc of the same album or something in that fashion. I cannot be said to be an album that strives far from the framework of war and bloodshed as established in the debut album.

I think it is the same kind of well made brutal death metal with some lovely riffing and some brutally brutal warmongering music. To say it is an evolvement of their music might be pushing it, more like another part in the same album as Devastate was. It feels as though this album has no real meaning, no real use as it does not add anything that we did not already get in the debut album. It is another good brutal death metal album but that is about all that it is. I was hoping for more as the debut album showed so much promise but this album shows more or less the same promise and no real evolvement since the debut. That might of course not have been what they wanted, maybe they wanted to walk the same paths and hide in the same trenches but even if they wanted that it is still also an album that is too long, over an hour is just too much even if the death metal is good.

So, they do show a lot of promise with their quite clever brutal death metal and they have done it for two albums now and I think soon it will be time for them to start living up to the promise and potential they show, you cannot be promising forever, can you? So a rather good brutal death metal album will have to be my final words in this review.