CIANIDE

What is it about CELTIC FROST/HELLHAMMER and bands from Chicago? Need we even ask why? Actually, we do not. We just need to be glad that that a select group of veteran deathsters have incorporated riffing and tone elements of the venerated ones into a sound that is distinctly Windy City. Is it USURPER or LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR of which we speak? It is not. It is a band that has lurked deeper underneath those Chi-Town streets for more than two decades. That band is CIANIDE. Their new album is "Gods of Death" and it is one ugly, lethally poisonous death metal album.

CIANIDE has never been about technical wizardry nor are they frequently brought up during USDM roundtable discussions (though they should be),but those "in the know" fully admit that few bands rumble and reverberate quite like CIANIDE. Rather, their mission has always been about plugging in, lowering heads, and going for it with a bludgeoning rumble and a sickening growl. And for that a dedicated circle of supporters has been thankful and never expected anything else. That's a good thing because "Gods of Death" stays the course. That being stated, the more you listen the more you'll find that the songs have a staying power even greater than those on 2005's "Hell's Rebirth", itself a lovely little son of a bitch.

"Gods of Death" is an album of eight distinctly memorable doom-infected death songs that brutishly pound the listener with malicious intent and not a single one even remotely approaches filler. Retained are the hallowed characteristics of growled ugliness, tightly wound drum/bass punch, and sickening riff churn, qualities also shared by kindred spirits MASTER. Toward the right end of the speedometer you are afforded several opportunities to get your furious head-bang on, including the speedy Hell hammering of "Rising of the Beast" and the putrid romp of the title track. The same goes for opportunities to skip along dementedly with "Idolator", "Terrorstrikes", and "Contained and Controlled".

But it is when CIANDIE descends to the depths of doomy death that the knot in your stomach will reach grapefruit size. The loping cadence and string-bent riff of "Forsaken Doom" is a supreme raiser of neck hairs. On "Dead and Rotting" and "The One True Death" the craters left are deep and the once fresh air that filled the room permanently polluted. With "Dead and Rotting" the movement between mournful march and two-beat terror, inclusive of tasty soloing, is demonstrative of a band that knows what it means to lock into one ungodly groove and jump without seam into another. During the meat-grinder plods and stuttering slow-gallops of closing monolith "The One True Death"CIANIDE then announce with twisted glee the official end of civilization as we know it. Too bad for you it isn't accompanied with an ascent to heaven, straight into the arms of God. Oh wait, we're talking about CIANIDE fans; it's a good thing. You've already made plans to buy "Gods of Death" anyway.