UMUR
Elements of Corrosion is the 3rd full-length studio album by American death metal act Oppressor. The album was released in August 1998 by Olympic Recordings. As it is, Elements of Corrosion turned out to be the last album released by the band. Several of the members would go on the form the alternative metal act Soil.
The music on the album is technical death metal with the occassional progressive touch. The latter element is very seldom though and this is first and foremost a brutal yet technically well played death metal album with loads of tempo changes and a generally adventurous approach to writing music. Pre-Obscura (1998) Gorguts is still what comes to mind as the primary influence, but also a band like Suffocation comes to mind. Oppressor are an exceptionally well played act and the 9 tracks on the 32:08 minute long album are packed with tight precision playing. The production is good but nothing out of the ordinary.
Elements of Corrosion is a great technical death metal album by Oppressor and I´m sure I would have loved it, had I listened to it when it was released. much water has run under the bridge since 1998 though ( and a lot of great technical death metal releases) and while there are many great ideas on Elements of Corrosion, I still find it lacking that extra something that could have put it among the elite technical death metal releases of the nineties. It´s probably an aquired taste though but I find a 3.5 star rating warranted.