DEICIDE

"Full of hate that one is," I remember Glen Benton once telling me in regards to DEICIDE drummer/songwriter Steve Asheim. This is one statement made by the outspoken frontman that nobody in their right mind could agree with. Be it hatred for humanity, God, Christ, the Hoffman brothers, Christians, Christ (double for him),puppy dogs, rainbows… you get the point; the dude is fucking pissed. Thankfully for those of us walking the streets, Asheim and his equally malevolent partner, the aforementioned Mr. Benton, prefer to turn their ire towards their instruments instead of violently focusing it towards this bullshit-laden conglomerate we call a functioning society. While personal strife, legal drama and roster controversy have cast a slight shadow of doubt over the follow up to 2006's "The Stench Of Redemption", the first impression given by "Till Death Do Us Part" should be all the confirmation anyone needs that DEICIDE has held tight to the intensity and brutality we all expect from them.

Going for a less calculated, and more chaotic approach than taken two years ago, "Hate Of All Hatreds" and "In the Eyes Of God" serve as new standards in classic, no-frills death metal by pummeling eardrums with constant, breakneck picking and drumming. This may be a case of playing it safe, but effect is undeniably felt. The melodic element brought to the table by guitarists Ralph Santolla (ex-ICED EARTH, OBITUARY) and Jack Owen (ex-CANNIBAL CORPSE) on "The Stench Of Redemption" may not be as prevalent this time around, but shades of melodious intervention tend to pop up here and there during the solos and the doom-tinged, instrumental opener, "The Beginning Of The End". Not that harmonious eloquence equals two shits when it comes to an album like this when you factor in the sheer skull-crushery of "Horror In The Halls Of Stone" which builds from a methodic groove to outright slaughter and back again. It's almost as if they've musically depicted the thought process of a spree killer from the birth of the twisted notion to the act itself and ended with the orgasmic afterglow of a man enjoying his day's work. That being said, it seems that Benton has shifted much of his lyrical focus from Christ-hate to the demons that have plagued his much-publicized personal situation. At the risk of sounding like a gossip column, titles like "Not As Long As We Both Shall Live", "Worthless Misery" and the name given to the album itself all sound a tad cathartic to me. You go Glen.

Is "Till Death Do Us Part" the same glorious return to the altar that "Stench Of Redemption" was? Not quite. There is a bit of wheel-spinning going on here and some of the disc does seem a bit rushed. From a fuck-the-world standpoint, this album delivers. As far as what this particular band has given us in the past, we've been given better, but DEICIDE sure hasn't given their careers a bloodied abortion with this album either.