CATASTROPHIC
The Cleansing
(Metal Blade Records)
39:28min

I’m not quite sure what actually lead to the origin of CATASTROPHIC, but fact is that I would certainly have preferred a new OBITUARY album over this here… Why OBITUARY? Well, because CATASTROPHIC is the new home of former OBITUARY / MEETHOOK SEED guitarist Trevor Peres, who joined forces with four ex-PYREXIA members for this. Guitarwise the album is still in the typical OBITUARY vein, with the only exception being that CATASTROPHIC also do incorporate several faster parts (while OBITUARY mainly concentrated on their CELTIC FROST meets Death Metal mixture). And the vocalist sounds like a Hardcore infected John Tardy, but never to the extend that his growling gets completely annoying (I personally can’t stand Hardcore at all…). It’s still a lot more on the Death Metal side of things, so you can relax again… All in all this turned out to be a quite solid and listenable offering, but on the other hand not really an essential one (with a dump logo design by the way). So, instead of coming up with a bunch of new bands, Alan West (currently in LOWBROW) and Peres should simply re-unite to write a new OBITUARY classic!

Frank Stöver

Frank Stöver

Leave a Reply