A respectable amount of particularly morbid and insane details come to mind when one thinks of Deicide. This band has been marked by controversy ever since its inception, most of it due to frontman Glenn Benton’s “peculiar” ways of expressing himself, to put it mildly. Even though, Deicide seem to have mostly left their well-known and arguably gimmicky sphere of madness in their recent years, this has finally allowed them to be judged for their musicality alone.
“Overtures of Blasphemy” is the name of their latest LP, an album which right off the bat sounds fairly similar to some of the recent full-length efforts from Deicide, clearly treading a similar path to the controversial “To Hell With God” (2011) and “In The Minds Of Evil” (2013), both having received their fair-share of mixed reviews. If you’re a hardcore fan of their old material and dislike the recent slight change of artistic direction that Benton & Co. have been exploring, perhaps you should skip this one.
However, this does not mean that it’s a bad album, on the contrary, the artistic performance on this album is spectacular, and the production value is very high. Everything sounds pristine, tight and fairly modern, but not overly produced. The guitar tone on “Overtures Of Blasphemy”, inherited from Deicide’s previous work, stills sounds phenomenal. The solos are fantastic, and Steve Asheim’s drumwork is completely out of this world, as per usual.
Sadly, the only detail that stains the perfect painting that this album had the potential of being is the fact that Deicide keeps churning out the same musical clichés they have been using since “To Hell With God”, and even some that they have been repeating throughout the entirety of their career, such as Glenn Benton’s repetitive vocal metrics. The innovation factor in this work is considerably low.
Overall, “Overtures of Blasphemy” will please current Deicide fans and has the potential to please death metal fans in general. The small whiffs of older Deicide in songs like “Excommunicated” and “Flesh, Power, Dominion” might even win back some purists. Far from reinventing the wheel, it remains a well recorded, well played, decently composed and honestly fun record, that despite not having reached its full potential as a record, still has enough raw power for extreme metal fans to honestly appreciate it.
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