Don’t let yourselves fool by the gory artwork used for this release – Arizona’s VEHEMENCE are definitely not your ordinary CANNIBAL CORPSE type act. These guys started out back in 1995 and developed a brutal, yet very atmospheric and melodic style throughout the years. Their ten track Metal Blade debut "God Was Created" already sounds extremely matured and seems to be the logical result of their past writing and recording experiences (a seven song demo already came out in 1998, followed by their self – financed debut CD "The Thoughts From Which I Hide" in 2000). Blessed with a fat production the album takes you on a pretty exciting roller coaster ride through quite some musical diversity, always remaining within the boundaries of brutality though. The overall dark’n’moody atmosphere, created by keyboards and melodic, partly acoustic guitar pieces, has this typical DIMMU BORGIR kind of feel to it, while the thrashy riffing comes across in an almost Gothenburg-style vein. On top of all that you’ll get the deep grunted, but never dull sounding voice of Nathan Gearhart, supported by a couple of aggresive screams from bass player Mark Kozuback. Yeah, it’s true that each element on its own already got used many times before, but to my knowledge never in this combination, so that VEHEMENCE are sounding kinda original at the end of the day nevertheless…