Californian long-term, sort of semi-Death Metal pioneers (or veterans) VILE, have always counted on their uncompromisingly murky and heavy Death Metal – keeping it tight in one form, and not allowing any popular trends of heavier music to have an influence on their sound over the past years. And that’s been great about them; staying truthful to your original roots. With the band’s 4th studio album, titled "Metamorphosis", not only the line-up has been changed from the band’s previous effort, "The New Age Of Chaos", recorded back in 2005 already (from that line-up there’s only Colin Davis and Tyson Jupin left in VILE’s current line-up) but the band has clearly taken a couple of steps towards a more experimental and challenging direction – and I am not saying this with any negative tone in my voice or anything at all. On "Metamorphosis", Colin handles both guitars and bass, Tyson pounds the skins as he already did on VILE’s couple of previous records – and Mike Hrubovcak (MONSTROSITY, DIVINE RAPTURE, etc.) has conquered the vocal department for himself, replacing the band’s longtime death lungs, Juan Urteaga. As said earlier. "Metamorphosis" is a bit different yet challenging record from VILE all in all; more varied, more experimental and having more melodic passages than the band’s previous albums. However, don’t take me a wrong way when I say VILE have added more melodic elements into their songs on "Metamorphosis" because they haven’t done it at the cost of giving any of their ominous brutality and heaviness away. They still sound very heavy and brutal as ever but with a vast amount of more melodic elements in their sound, they also do sound more intriguing yet captivating to listen to. VILE’s way to combine brutality and heaviness with slices of certain dark melodies, has turned out to be a really successful recipe for them on "Metamorphosis". Out of 11 tracks they have recorded for "Metamorphosis", I think a song called ‘Wolf At Your Door’, may cause small waves on controversy at least whether this particular song in question represents VILE the way we have used to hear from them before. I mean, those clean vocals and chants – similar to DIMMU BORGIR and EMPEROR, do sound a pretty odd as a part of VILE’s stuff. If nothing else, they at least work as some kind of wake-up call for listeners for activating their brains to think "What the f**k just happened?!". In spite of all written above, I myself reckon "Metamorphosis" is the band’s most enjoyable and mature album to this date – and suggest you warmly to check it out. www.vilemetal.com