Review: Deicide “Overtures Of Blasphemy” [Century Media Records]

I would like to start this review a bit different, this is a quote by Benton himself on the That Drummer Guy website, the link of the full interview will be below the review.

The quote goes:

“Lately, the music scene has been kind of dried up. There haven’t been too many records that have been put out recently that hype things up, that people are excited about, getting their hands out. With the music business now, it’s kind of hard to write inspired music when you know it’s just going to be given away. It’s kind of hard to invest that time and effort into something that’s going to be given away. I don’t want to say, not everybody, but there’s a lot of bands that lost their energy because of that whole thing.”

And this pretty much summarizes their new album Overtures of Blasphemy.

Deicide is defiantly who had a few bumps on the road; with the first four albums who are today historic in their quality and then took a more historic nosedive with Insineratehymn and even more with In Torment in Hell which is known that their label at the time Roadrunner rushed the band to finish it.

After that The Stench of Redemption was a real redeeming album for the band and kick in the teeth for the Hoffman brothers who left the band after the previous album Scars of the Crucifix. After Stench in 2006 Decide never got the new kick with their next albums and they were just sort of there. But 2013s In The Minds of Evil Deicide was a step up from their other mediocre albums and showed that they still had the juice to release a solid death metal album.

Five years later with Overtures of Blasphemy the band did another step back with another filler record. Alright, to be totally straight this is not a bad record but it does sounds like beating a near death horse with grinding their Stench of Redemption formula, badly.

Nevertheless, there are stuff to like in the album, solos and guitar work in the album are the saving grace of the whole thing, songs like “Seal the Tomb Below” or “Compliments of Christ” feel like the band was genially trying to do a great song, and they are but the most of the feel so by the numbers tracks that is a chore to go thought the whole record although is lasts minus 40 minutes.

Benton unlike the last album sounds so uninterested and bored in his vocal performance that he could be the worst part of the album. The production is more muddier then the punchy In the Minds of Evil.

If you a die-hard Deicide fan, you probably already have the album and who knows; you may like it. For other extreme metal fans, this more sounds like a band wants to sound like Deicide or any other successful Florida death metal bands but with a lack of inspiration and good ideas.