UMUR
"Chaos Revamped" is the 4th full-length studio album by Greek death metal act Sickening Horror. The album was released through Pathologically Explicit Recordings in June 2020. It´s the successor to "Overflow" from 2015 and as far as I can see, there haven´t been any lineup changes between the two albums. Sickening Horror formed in 2002 and released two albums featuring a technically well played but still old school oriented and relatively brutal death metal style, but with "Overflow (2015)" they suddenly sounded like a completely different band, playing a technical/progressive death metal style with fusion influenced drumming and occasional use of keyboards.
Stylistically the material on "Chaos Revamped" are mostly in a similar vein to the first two albums, but the music style is slightly more technically focused and a little more polished and less raw, than the old school oriented death metal style on the first two albums by the band. So in that respect you could say that "Chaos Revamped" is a combination of the band´s two styles. The most technical/progressive ideas from "Overflow (2015)" have been weeded out though, and there is a better balance between the old school death metal parts and more technical death metal ideas on "Chaos Revamped". Sickening Horror have not quite been able to recreate the claustrophobic, sick darkness of the early releases, but "Chaos Revamped" is still a pretty brutal and raw sounding death metal album. So in that respect the title of the album was well chosen and probably very much a conscious choice to signal a return to a more brutal and raw death metal sound.
"Chaos Revamped" features a brutal, raw and powerful sound production, which suits the material well, and the musical performances are on a high level from all involved. The vocals are growling and relatively intelligible, and to my ears it´s a good choice Sickening Horror have made to return to a sound that´s closer to their early style, as I can´t say "Overflow (2015)" convinced me that Sickening Horror had much of a future playing technical/progressive death metal. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.