It’s been quite a while since I last heard something really impressive out of Switzerland, especially when it comes to brutal music. Luckily REQUIEM are about to change this for the better now. Their first full length album “Formed At Birth” is without a doubt a high energy crusher of international quality! It’s unbelievable how tight this four-piece already performs their raw and very intense Death Metal, especially considering the fact that they didn’t play in this direction before 1999 (the band originally started out with a way more melodic approach). In 2001 they put out their first five song mini CD (“Nameless Grave”) via Fastbeat Entertainment, which not only gained them a lot of positive feedback within the underground, it furthermore caught the attention of Germany’s Revenge Productions, who were so impressed by REQUIEM’s qualities that they didn’t hesitate to offer them a deal for a full length right away. The result is “Formed At Birth”, an album that features nine tracks of straight forward, brutal grinding Death Metal, with influences mostly from the first league of the US scene (kinda like a MALEVOLENT CREATION / TERRORIZER mixture). So, as you can probably imagine, there’s no real musical surprises to be discovered, except for the little “scratching” that got incorporated in the titletrack. But hey, that’s more than fine with me as the material still knows to impress because of its incredible intensity. REQUIEM furthermore luckily don’t follow the new generation of “frog noise” infected acts, but stick to a real deep grunted brutal vocal delivery instead, which even increases their rawness. I’m not so impressed by the two additional (bonus) tracks on offer here (‘Murder U.S.A.’ and ‘Fuck-Kill-Die’) as they’re featured in quite annoying remix versions… And the choice of color for the coverartwork (courtesy of Marco Gemmet / Darken Art) didn’t make my day either (it comes in light green). Apart from that – a very cool debut from a band with a bright future! Contact: www.requiem-net.com, www.revengeproductions.com