DEMILICH — Nespithe (review)

Album · 1993 · Death Metal

2.5/5 · 2010-10-21
Time Signature

The cry...

Genre: tech / prog death metal

Ay ay ay ay! This is a tragedy! Writing this review breaks the heart.

Musically, this album is actually very good, as it contains a series of well-crafted technical death metal tracks which, while technical and progressive, never are too much. There is a lot of nice both aggressive and arty riffage on this album and numerous challenging twists and turns - just the way that technical death metal ought to be.

The whole conceptual imagery of the album is also kind of arty in a bizarre and morbid way which I totally appreciate, that is what death metal is all about anyway. I mean, I like the very long and bizarre song titles - I mean, how can you go wrong with "The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That It Desired...)" or "The Putrefying Road in the Nineteenth Extremity (...Somewhere Inside the Bowels of Endlessness...)" or "The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed)"? I mean, that's class.

So what's the tragic part?

The tragic part is the vocals. The vocals on this album are probably the most annoying vocals I've ever heard - and we're talking a level of annoyance that is otherwise associated with the likes of The Cheeky Girls and other deformities unleashed upon mankind via shows like Idol or The X-Factor. It's not because the vocals are growled - I do not have a problem with growling... if it's done right. But the vocals on this release are so guttural that I guess "burping" is a better label than "growling". In addition to being burping, the vocals are also extremely monotonous and devoid of any sort of aggressive emotion, and they do not fit the otherwise excellent and varied music on this album enough. Moreover, they are too loud in the mix and drowned in echo and reverb. It annoys me so much that I cannot listen to this release in one go from beginning to end; I simply need breaks from the vocals.

Gagh! I really hate it when this happens, but this is a case of the vocals ruining the listening experience, and that's a shame because the music is brilliant. It's five star music and zero star vocals which gives an undeserved 2.5 star rating.

I'd recommend this to fans of technical death metal who are less sensitive to burpy vocals than I am. Maybe such people can appreciate this album for the death metal masterpiece that it is.

more than 2 years ago
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Time Signature wrote:

more than 2 years ago

It's probably us ;-)

UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

LOL, I must say that´s exactly how I remember this album too. Good music and terrible vocals, but I´ll have to revisit the album again to refresh if I still feel this way. It´s widely considered a classic death metal album, so maybe there´s something we´re missing :-).