DECREPIT BIRTH — Diminishing Between Worlds (review)

DECREPIT BIRTH — Diminishing Between Worlds album cover

Album · 2008 · Technical Death Metal

4/5 · 2017-09-19
voila_la_scorie

So, I see here on MMA that these guys formed with the intention of playing brutal technical death metal with influences from the early Florida death metal scene. I am not sure how much of the music on this album reflects the latter; however, the former is firmly in place. This is fast, brutal, and all-over-the-place technical death metal.

I think I stumbled across the band while checking out various death metal artists on Amazon, and Decrepit Birth appeared as a recommended artist. At the time, I was open to anything and a quick listen to them on YouTube left me with the one decision: which album to get. I decided on this, their second album (out of four so far), and for it what is, I rather like it.

I must say that it is not easy for me ever to describe an album like this, nor is it easy to pick out favourite songs. The reason is that the music typically follows the same construct from song to song. We're talking about a single vocalist who roars a deep gutteral vocal, blazing fast guitar leads and complex and speedy riffing, blasting drums with both double-bass pummel drumming and speedy and complex rhythms beat out, or rather thrashed out, on the snare and toms. My guess is that the bass guitar is just as busy. I usually pick out favourite songs by awesome riffs, a cool bass break, a good melody, or some outstanding feature that makes a track distinct from the others, and it is really difficult to do that here. While a pop metal song might be described as a good children's book read out by a dramatic story teller, Decrepit Birth play more like an auctioneer. Of DOOM! Ha, ha!

But seriously, once you start giving each track it's own ear space, there are lots of bits of cool stuff in there. Just listening to the title track now, I can here some wonderful lead guitar melodies and some cool riffs here and there. There's one of the bass breaks I look out for showing up on "Enigmatic Forms". Listen to that mellow, clean guitar opening on "Dimensions Intertwine" that leads into some Nile-like riffing before returning to typical Decrepit Birth style, and then surpise! acoustic guitar! Admittedly though, just skipping through the songs does make the album seem a little repetative. So again, each track needs to be given some ear time to catch when the speed slows down, and great riff drops, and guitar lead goes soaring by, or something different happens. Interestingly enough, there's a track called "And Time Begins" which was the title of their first album.

Like many extreme metal albums I have picked up recently, I find this album sounds good and is fine to listen to front to back and any track can be pulled off for stand alone listen (the last is a short instrumental with, I believe, synthesized strings). But again, it's not easy to call out any particular favourites. The recording quality is good. The album sounds great and is on the loud side, so I usually have to click the volume a notch or two down when the ear buds are in and this comes on.

Recommened for fans of technical, brutal death metal!