Czech death metallers Godless Truth have existed for nine year now. 'Burning Existence' is their second album. I have their debut 'Desperation' (1996), but it is a fucked up copy: Some of its ten songs are same! Shitty print by Deadsun Records... Well because of that it's good that I got this sophomore platter first, since after such a stupid thing I came up with the debut I probably would have forgotten the band and fast!

Well, this 2nd album sounds better when compared to the debut, both music- and sound-wise, even though there's a lot of interesting things going on the first one too. The sound is clean and everything what's played can be heard. While this is clean, this isn't heavy, but neither too thin. Flapping snare drum could have been a tad more audible and powerful, but those who like their snare flapping, this sound good. The sound is so clean, that any mistake would be immediately noticed, but Godless Truth do not make mistakes, they play quite technical death metal. Technical playing, but also out-of-norm compositions help the band fly over deep and easy-to-fall-in ($£€-wise) pits of plagiarism.

So, this is thinking man's death metal more than brutal burst-out without anything else than brutality, brutality and brutality. Of course Godless Truth can blast, but they never do it eternally, as at times they throw in some tasty melodies. I can't think of any bands similar to Godless Truth. There's death metal mixed with some thrash metal. Okay, Death from 'Human' (1991) onwards might be somewhere in the same direction, and possibly at times the likes of Pestilence and Atheist... But whereas many a band make their technical branch of death metal complicated and ultimately misguided, Godless Truth manage to keep things interesting for the duration of the album. I must mention, that drums are played by a session drummer, even though I would have never thought so.

Lyrics-wise Godless Truth inspect and attack all kind of bad sides of human beings and human life. War, politics, diseases, religious people (whatever, Christians, Satanists, no matter), perversions and killers. The cover art is interesting in its dissimilarity to usual metal music cover artworks. The simplistic lyrics are printed, which is good, since Zdenek's growled vocals are incomprehensible for a good time. His voice is throat-ripping intensive and gurgling at times.

'Burning Existence' is not an easy record, but when it does reveal its secrets, it should seriously hook any death-head. As mentioned before, thinking over brutality, but not as melodic as one might fear.

Rating: 8- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
09/10/2003 19:35