THE DEAD
Ritual Executions
(Diabolical Conquest Records)
45:48min

India’s newly-launched Diabolical Conquest Records attacks the worldwide Death Metal underground scene with the release of THE DEAD’s “Ritual Executions” album. This is a re-release in a re-mastered version by PORTAL’s Aphotic Mote, originally self-released and limited to 100 copies back in 2009. Australian Death Metal usually doesn’t show that much mass appeal and don’t expect an album which will be everybody’s darling here either. THE DEAD present us on “Ritual Executions” approx. 45 minutes of Doom / Death Metal with certain Stoner / BLACK SABBATH influences. Others might say that AUTOPSY at their doomiest era could be mentioned, too. Decide for yourself what you prefer most, though a further engagement with this band is necessary. Sludge and drone is hearable nonstop during those three quarter hours and performed in such an honest and traceable way. It’s not that they wanna sound sludgy, doomy, ugly – they seem to live and feel it and you can see that this is exactly the music they planned to perform. I don’t know the original version of this release, but considering that the re-release is a re-mastered version of it let me assume that the original sound wasn’t that entertaining, hence the sound of the re-release is fantastic and suits just perfect to this type of music. Expect no love songs here. The music played is hard to describe for me and it’s definitely a love it or hate it type of release. It took me a few runs to feel comfortable with this release, especially as I’m not such a huge adorer of this type of music. But once you succeeded THE DEAD will stay on your turntable (make that “CD-player” in these modern times) for quite a while. As I’m not sure if the average Voices reader (is there one??) fits to the clientele of this band, I recommend to check out the tunes on their myspace page first and take your time with it. I will listen now again to the awesome almost 10 minutes lasting final track ‘Death Metal Suicide’ – an instrumental with a hypnotizing melody-line (and a weird name for an instrumental, isn’t it?). An awesome end for an astonishing album. Well done. For ordering details check out www.diabolicalconquest.com and have a listen at www.myspace.com/lordofthelivingdead. It’s worth it!!

Thomas Ehrmann

Thomas Ehrmann

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