THE CLEANSING

This school of Danish death metal gets surprisingly little attention outside a rabid worldwide cult following. Its trademarks — super-heavy and chunky riffing delivered in a clean, immaculate tone, barbaric guttural barking vocals, tightly-controlled but blisteringly fast blasting — seem like hallmarks of crowd-pleasing, pit-friendly death metal the world over, yet bands like INIQUITY and DAWN OF DEMISE often seem overshadowed by groups from other countries. It could be the somewhat staid uniformity of the sound — you've heard five minutes of it, you've heard it all — but when has that stopped any other DM band from attaining notoriety?

THE CLEANSING feature a Who's Who of this small scene's royalty, including members of USIPIAN and INIQUITY. They sport the usual Jacob Hansen production punishment, along with the slight technical flourishes and the sense of relentlessness that makes an album like "Poisoned Legacy" such a delightful beatdown — even a slow, pensive, brooding riff (see the beginning of "Insects of the Void") is jarred out of any complacency by inexorable blast beats, given an unsettling atmosphere that's as grind as it is doom. Throw in a few pinch harmonics and a little bit of melodic soloing, sparingly applied, and you've got yourself a typical, but utterly brutal, Danish death metal experience.

THE CLEANSING aren't going to win over anyone not already a fan of the style, or wow the world with their originality, but practicing the genre with this much skill and conviction definitely makes them worth your time. They're a little more dynamic than most (see the seething slow crush of "The Domino of Phantom Effects" for a nice change of pace) and they deliver the expected goods with precision and fervor. Even the sidelining of vocalist Toke Eld with throat troubles couldn't stop them; bassist Martin Rosendahl stepped up and performed the obligatory from-the-gut DM bellow on this album with aplomb. "Poisoned Legacy" is a solid, meat-and-potatoes kind of death metal release — satisfying, fulfilling, suffering only from a relative lack of individuality.