UMUR
"Knives of Ice" is the 3rd full-length studio album by US, New Jersey based death metal act Dim Mak. The album was released through Willowtip Records in April 2006. It´s the successor to "Intercepting Fist" from 2002 and features two lineup changes since the predecessor as bassist Dennis Carroll has been replaced by Scott Hornick and drummer Brandon Thomas has been replaced by John Longstreth. The latter being quite the prolific addition to the lineup, as he is known for his skillful playing on releases by artists like Origin and Angelcorpse.
Stylistically Dim Mak continue to develop and enhance the death/brutal thrash metal style guitarist Shaune Kelley and lead vocalist Scott Ruth played in their original act Ripping Corpse. Dim Mak have followed another lyrical path taking inspiration from old kung-fu/martial arts movies and eastern mystics, but the foundation to their particular brand of death metal, which features strong elements of brutal thrash metal, comes all the way back from when the two gentlemen played in Ripping Corpse.
Although both "Enter the Dragon (1999)" and "Intercepting Fist (2002)" are decent quality death metal releases and the lyrical themes/image and Ruth´s distinct sounding aggressive semi-growling vocals provide both with an original identity, none of them featured particularly memorable songwriting, nor did they feature particularly well sounding production jobs. They shone in the authenticity and rawness departments, but that wasn´t enough for them to reach the excellent mark. To my ears "Knives of Ice" is an upgrade in almost all departments possible. It´s not a flawless release, and there are still some issues with some tracks lacking memorable hooks, but the memorability of the songwriting has generally become much better than on the two predecessors, and there are several strong tracks featured on the album.
The addition of Longstreth to the lineup, has meant greater rhythmic variation too, and many of the riffs on the album are greatly enjoyable...sharp, aggressive, and brutal. Another positive feature are the guitar leads, which are very well played and feature a nice selection of notes. On the negative side Ruth´s performance is a bit up an down to my ears. Sometimes I´m blown aways by his aggressive snarling semi-growling, but other times he sounds a little out of breath or like his voice is worn from the recording sessions. That´s of course a bit unfortunate as inconsistency is rarely a positive when reviewing an album release.
"Knives of Ice" features a powerful, detailed, and well sounding production job, which suits the material perfectly. One of the many upgrades from the previous releases. All in all it´s a high quality death metal release by Dim Mak (despite a few flaws) and a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating isn´t all wrong.