DECAPITATED are besides BEHEMOTH and VADER one of the most popular bands coming from Poland. They return with their full-length number seven via Nuclear Blast. As I missed out their last three records, I was curious to check out their current material and musical direction. The opening track starts promising but already reveals the direction of the album after some seconds. Somewhere between Neo Thrash and Metalcore influences and slight Death Metal nuances, the band thrashes through the eight tracks of the album. Using only one guitar, limits their sound to only groove orientated modern Metal. Still the band around mastermind Vogg is able to write proper songs, as ‘Earth Scar’, ‘Never’ or ‘Amen’ are not bad, but bands seem to make decisions at certain points in their career and DECAPITATED decided to go the direction of bands like SOULFLY or LAMB OF GOD. I will not blame anybody for changing the musical direction as it is simple as listener to decide if you want to continue buying the records of a band or not. The Facebook comments about bands like IN FLAMES are really useless as they simply decided to make the band bigger and bigger instead of playing in front of 50 people for the rest of their life. That’s it. Personally for me, the modern sound of these bands is simply not my cup of tea. I enjoyed listening to the mentioned tracks and they are very groovy, well produced and occasionally some blast-beats and melodies are really fine and show the past of the band but compared to bands like DEW-SCENTED, who at least have a bit similar vocals, I prefer them as they have the better doze of dirty Thrash in their sound and DECAPITATED seem to consider a bit too much, what sells better instead of creating something more unique. Fans of modern groove Metal will surely enjoy the perfect production and the groovy repeating riffs, but I miss the soul in their sound and sadly the guys share the same destiny as KATAKLYSM. More info can be found here: www.facebook.com/decapitated, www.nuclearblast.de