DEATHORCHESTRA — Symphony of Death (review)

DEATHORCHESTRA — Symphony of Death album cover Live album · 2020 · Symphonic Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
UMUR
"Symphony of Death" is a collaboration album project by Russian technical death metal act Buicide and the Olympic Symphony Orchestra. The album was independently released in December 2020. "Symphony of Death" is a live album recorded May the 4th, 2019 at the Opera Concert Club in Saint Petersburg. All material on the 7 track, 36:14 minutes long album are cover tracks of influential Florida death metal act Death. The album´s release date was deliberately chosen to coincide with the 19th anniversary of Death founder Chuck Schuldiner's death. "Symphony of Death" is available in both audio format and a DVD video format.

This is obviously a tribute album enterpreting Death´s music with the addition of a symphony orchestra. Honestly when I first heard about the project, I didn´t expect much, but I´ve been pleasantly surprised, and the combination of the technical death metal and the symphony orchestra works really well. It should be mentioned right away, that "Symphony of Death" is fully intrumental, and that the vocal melodies/lines are handled by the orchestra. Again it works like a charm. I like the fact that it´s audible that this is a live recording with audience noise, yet the sound production is still clear, detailed, and powerful. Buicide are well playing and do the songs great justice, and Olympic Symphony Orchestra manage to add some intriguing symphonic arrangements to the tracks.

There is a wealth of great material to chose from in the Death catalogue, and 7 tracks aren´t much, but I think they´ve picked some great tracks for the album in "Voice of the Soul", "Crystal Mountain", "Zero Tolerance", "Scavenger Of Human Sorrow", "Spirit Crusher", "Destiny", and "Pull the Plug".

"Symphony of Death" is the kind of project which could easily have failed badly, but DeathOrchestra manage to present intricate versions of the original material and "Symphony of Death" is ultimately a great tribute to Schuldiner and I´m sure he would be proud of- and grateful for the gesture, had he still been alive. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.
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Vim Fuego wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Yeah, when I first heard of it I thought it would be a terrible mess, but that band seems to be pretty good, and the orchestration is excellent.
UMUR wrote:
more than 2 years ago
I was surprised I liked it so much, but I think it´s pretty great. Fans of Death should definitely give it a chance.
Vim Fuego wrote:
more than 2 years ago
I really enjoyed this too. The cool thing was they picked a range of Death songs rather than just sticking to the one era.

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