Serpent Obscene certainly do not want to sound modern! Their mixture of thrash and death metal harks back to the 1980s, when metal bands couldn't get nominated to all kinds of silly music awards.

The spirit of German thrash metal is strongly present with Swedish death metal, which has smaller role. What else can be this kind of music based on than riffs? There are loads of them for sure, but only a few of them are truly precious. Guitars could be sharper, in my opinion, as they sound kind of blunt now. Almost every song ends close at around 3-minute mark. Tempo is quite fast all the time. There's some tasty double bass drum parts among more blasting attack, but also thrashing mosh parts. Yep, drummer likes to change the beat a lot. Slower parts really lift their ugly heads among fast riffing. This was recorded in six days, of course to keep it raw, but I'm not happy with the sound. Rhythm sections kicks ass, but otherwise it doesn't.

Biggest inconvenience is vocalist's dry and bloody dull raspy throat. He doesn't show anything else here and I think the voice affects the music making it sound more unvarying. And the vocals are mixed a bit low, too, with slight reverb. The song titles tell everything about lyrical content of this album; war, diseases, killing, satanic horror, you know the stuff. Nothing new on offer.

I'm sure some of you thrash maniax will like this a lot. Therefore: investigate. Suits for beer drinking nights, this one. Next time more powerful vocals and guitars and it'd be on a next level.

Rating: 6 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
08/12/2002 10:04