UMUR
"Afterburner" is the 7th full-length studio album by Dutch death metal act Sinister. The album was released through Nuclear Blast Records in April 2006. It´s the successor to "Savage or Grace" from 2003. Quite a few things happened in the years between the two albums. Sinister disbanded shortly after the release of "Savage or Grace (2003)" and drummer Aad Kloosterwaard and bassist Alex Paul formed No Face Slave. In 2005 Kloosterwaard and Paul opted to begin playing under the Sinister monicker again, and added drummer Paul Beltman to the lineup completing the band´s new three-piece lineup. Kloosterwaard moved from drums to vocals and Paul plays guitars in addition to handling the bass. So Rachel Van Mastrigt-Heyzer (vocals), Pascal Grevinga (guitars), and Ron van de Polder (guitars) weren´t invited back to reunite with the band.
Stylistically the material on "Afterburner" sound more or less as Sinister have sounded like since day one. Relatively brutal death metal with an occasional emphasis on heavy grooves. Quality wise the last two albums weren´t that interesting, but to my ears "Afterburner" is a return to the greatness of "Aggressive Measures (1998)". It´s not quite as focused on heavy grooves as "Aggressive Measures (1998)" was, but the brutal grooves are there and they nicely compliment the old school death metal brutality of the remaining part of the material. The tracks are generally well written and relatively catchy for the genre and there are even a couple of atmospheric parts thrown in for variation, which work really well for the flow of the album.
"Afterburner" is an album which attacks the listener with a brutal death metal assault, but because of the above mentioned features it never becomes a one-dimensional listen and when the 8 track, 45:02 minutes long album has finished playing, the listener is left wanting more, and that´s always an achievement with music as brutal as this. It´s not that Sinister stand out much from what is standard on the death metal scene, and they don´t have a sound that is overtly unique, but on "Afterburner" they do what they do with such burning conviction and great skill, that sounding unique isn´t as important as it may otherwise be with other similar sounding releases.
The bottom line is that "Afterburner" is just a really good quality death metal album, featuring memorable songwriting, strong performances (it should be mentioned here that the change on the vocalist spot has been a great improvement), and a raw and brutal sounding production job, which suits the material perfectly. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.