Artist: Deicide (US) Album: To Hell with God (2011) Genre: Death Metal The above album title should be sufficient for you to figure out Glen Benton and his mates haven’t turned to the light yet and aren’t yet bathing in the merciful forgiveness of the Lord. To us Metalheads that’s good news, as it means we can continue to enjoy music that is harder than diamond, sharper than shark teeth and more evil than fuckin’ Beelzebub.

THwG was released halfway into February of this year and we’ve had it in our possession since not long after that. This post over at NCS is what triggered us to order the album, since we dug what we heard: the album’s closing song How Can You Call Yourself a God. Turns out that was the “softest” song on the record and the main reason why we haven’t reviewed the record until now is because quite frankly the opening song scared the living shit out of us and we were too afraid to even touch the album, let alone listen to it.

Until we forced ourselves to earlier this week and we found out this is actually an amazing album that just has an incredibly hard crust to deal with first. Now, we love the fucker more with every spin.

The first tunes of the opening and title track made me shit my pants. “Shit Fuck Ass, what have I bought?!” was pretty much my first thought. Blast beats that sound like a can of jackhammers has just been opened, guitar riffs that go faster than light while raping your brain container to shreds, and vocals that sound like the violent post-beans farts of Satan.

Seriously, those first tunes may well have been worse than getting anally gored by a horny elephant. It may well have been. I don’t know, I’ve never been anally gored by an elephant, but what I imagine ain’t pretty.

But as often happens, though not with getting gored by an elephant I imagine, this shit grows on you. Slowly, but steadily and irreversibly. What is just plain noise at first turns into awe-striking musical patterns. It starts making sense and the more it does, the more it’s enjoyed.

At the current moment I’m heavily enjoying the drums that are faster than a nerd’s first orgasm and guitar riffs that consume my ears instead of vice versa. I’m playing it loud, because that’s how it works best. Obviously.

When you get a little further into the album, you may notice that there’s actually a lot of Thrashiness going on in this album. A lot of the material strikes me as being the extremity peak of Death-Thrash. Those riffs really are fast, and they are raw and tearing too, ripping silence apart like my eardrum just got ripped.

But there’s more guitar on this album than just fast-as-fuck riffs. After all, what initially stimulated me to order this bugger were the great and highly technical solos that I heard on the songs that struck my interest. Whichever, maybe both, of the two guitarists, Jack Own and Ralph Santolla, that play these solos must have either gotten his talent from God or by signing a contract with the devil. The former sounds unlikely, don’t you think?

I had a hard time selecting the right track to include in this write up. Do I want to give you an accurate picture of the complete and utter (brilliant) violence that this album is for nine tenths, or do I give you a taste of the song that I still hold as the best, the song that convinced me to purchase: How Can You Call Yourself a God? Fuck, I can’t decide at all, so I’ll just feed you two songs. First one’s called Conviction, and also gives you a clear flavor of that Thrash I talked about. The second is How Can You Call Yourself a God. Turn it up loud!

Needless to say, this is not for you if you’re a friend of God. But even if you’re not, or if you just don’t give a flying fuck, this stuff may well way past your boundaries of taste. However, do know that this fucker grows on you. Fast. What sounds as a shitstorm from Hell at first quickly turns into ordered chaos, then into stuff that makes complete sense, then maybe even into stuff that may strike you as being brilliant. Just make sure you can give it the time to turn into your mate. And if you decide not to buy, know that you may be missing out on something fackin’ wicked!

My Grade: 8.0/10
Buy this when:

• you’re not an (active) Christian
• your neighbors aren’t members of a violent Christian cult
• you’re prepared to go through a couple of hours of agony before you get through to the value of this thing

Tags: American, death, review

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 7th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.