PESTILENCE — Hadeon (review)

PESTILENCE — Hadeon album cover Album · 2018 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Nightfly
Pestilence has not had the easiest of rides over the years, from fans and critics alike. It could be argued that this is their own doing as they have shifted styles almost on an album by album basis. From their early critically acclaimed death/thrash days they moved into a less raw sounding and more technical form of death metal with Testimony Of The Ancients. They then alienated a lot of fans with the jazz laden Spheres with mainman Patrick Mameli being highly influenced by the guitar work of Alan Holdsworth and other jazz/fusion players. A split followed but a return in 2008 led to the 2009 album Resurrection Macabre which seemed to signal a return to less experimental days. However, it was short lived with following album Doctrine lacking direction and re-introducing the jazz elements to a certain extent though less successfully than on Spheres. The more cohesive Obsideo followed and whilst not ditching the jazz/tech aspects entirely was a far more satisfying collection of songs and one of my favourites from the band.

Roll on to 2018 and Hadeon, studio album number eight. Perhaps they’ve grown tired of the critics but for whatever reason Hadeon is their most straight forward death metal album for a quite some time. It’s certainly doesn’t have the raw sound of Consuming Impulse having an up to date production. Nor does it ditch the technical aspects altogether and with players of this calibre I wouldn’t want them too. Old school death metal it ain’t but they focus more on delivering a collection of songs with great riffs and groove. The riffs are tight and they occasionally throw in a bit of thrash into the overall death metal sound. There’s a healthy dose of dissonance in many of these riffs as well, Oversoul being a prime example which drives along with a strong mid pace groove. All the songs are pretty short with nothing reaching the four minute barrier but they manage to inject plenty of changes into them. There’s still the odd moment of jazz creeping in like the bass led instrumental Subvisions and on some of the guitar solos too which generally have a strong melodic sensibility. Mameli is singing in a slightly lower register to my ears and far more satisfying than the screeching on Doctrine. My only gripe, which is minor, is I could have done without the robotic vocals that appear on a couple of songs like Ultra Demons though they are short lived.

Hadeon should keep most Pestilence fans more than happy (unless you only like Spheres) which doesn’t mean it smacks of compromise. Myself, I thought Obsideo was a great album, but this is equally so, just a more streamlined version of the band.
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