The Dutch fivepiece PLEURISY constantly used to deliver very high quality releases ever since their demo days and it seems that their hard work finally pays off internationally after all. One obvious proof of that to me is the fact that NECROPHAGIA’s Killjoy is gonna re-release their "Experience The Sacrilege" album on his Baphomet label in the US pretty soon. But with their newest, second full length, album "Dazed And Deranged" the band once more made a big step forward for it is without any doubts not only their most professional and matured sounding so far, it’s also got everything you could demand from a band that’s left behind their training days a while ago already. Starting off with the packaging, which looks extremely pro this time (artwork by Chad Michael Ward and a very cool new logo courtesy of Christoph Szpajdel), to the powerful production (Harrow Studios) and last, but certainly not least – their best songmaterial to date! Just like many other bands these days also PLEURISY have changed a little bit more towards Death Metal, as opposed to stick to their more thrashier approach from the past. But they do it with so much class that I couldn’t care less! The downtuning of the guitars enrich their heaviness and the recruitation of new vocalist George Oosthoek was another very good decision to improve their qualities. I always used liked his brutal, yet very unique sounding voice in his former band ORPHANAGE, but it seems that he even fits better to PLEURISY’s material. The entire album is very raw, morbid and brutal, yet perfomed with technical skills on a very high level, arranged with finesse and spiced with some excellent melody lines that never water down the heaviness in any way. "Dazed And Deranged" as a whole comes across like a solid mixture of brutality, grooves and catchiness and should easily impress fans of all kinds of brutal music in a similar way. All further info as well as mp3 samples of the album are available at the band’s website www.pleurisy.nl, so make sure to check it out