United in Regret

There's a lot going on with Arsis lately. Their not-so-hotly anticipated fifth album, Unwelcome, is due out in a month or so, and Scion A/V is continuing their quest to be the hippest car company in the universe by releasing their new surprise EP, Lepers Caress, (aren't they missing an apostrophe there? That title looks weird...) for free today. This is all shortly following frontman James Malone sitting out a recent tour, which is significant because Arsis has always been his baby, it's essentially a one man band with some other dudes who play along. It'd be like Lemmy sitting out of a Motorhead tour, it's just preposterous to think of. And then there was the joke article stating that Malone had quit music altogether to take a job as a strength and conditioning coach for the New York Mets (that I totally didn't fall for out of sheer absurdist optimism...). And now they're embarking on a tour with Sonata fucking Arctica of all bands. So to celebrate all of these recent headlines surrounding a band that nobody has cared about for about four years now, I'm gonna take y'all back to their forgotten album, 2006's United in Regret.

This one holds a special place in my heart. Their previous two releases, A Celebration of Guilt and A Diamond for Disease have both been collectively coated in so much fanboy goo that you get a free wipey when you buy them, and everything after this album has been part of a surreal, circus style slide into failure and insanity. United in Regret, in hindsight, can be seen as the harbinger to the carnival fire that Arsis became around the time Starve for the Devil came out. A lot of the warning signs are there, the songs are a lot less cohesive, the lyrics and themes are even more laughably whimpy, and Malone is more visibly just a whiny teenager who happens to be a great guitar player. Even though the debut is clearly better, there's a strange personality to this album that its predecessor lacks. Simply put, United in Regret has got charisma.

If nothing else, this record has to be the first concept album about being friendzoned in all of heavy metal. Love is a powerful emotion, and one of the easiest to write about and relate to. It's a great base to start from, and I have no qualms with romantic themes in an otherwise dark style, it definitely has potential to work in a strange harmonic dissonance way. The way Arsis approaches this, however, is with the same teary eyed angst and frustration of a fifteen year old boy in a mad dash to his diary after breaking up with his girlfriend of one month.

All nine of the tracks on display are based around some unnamed Mary Sue (whom I shall henceforth refer to as Sheldon Noodlespine) lashing out angrily at some woman he "loved" (let's call her Annabelle Gobelcocque) who didn't love him back. Basically she was a whore who cheated on him with somebody who presumably wasn't a spindly anorexic dork with abandonment issues. Each and every song references this whore's lies or her lips or some odd reference to a monument or the word "indifference". That last word makes me think the true motivation behind these vitriolic diatribes is something more akin to this: Sheldon really liked this girl. He liked Annabelle so much that he convinced himself he loved her, but because he's a clingy nerd with as much confidence and sex appeal as a biscuit with two shits inside of it, she wasn't attracted to him, but liked how nice he was to her, so she saw him as a good friend and nothing more. James grew more and more obsessed every day, convincing himself that she was this immaculate seraph whose very existence was proof of the divine. Every day in history class he'd zone out googly eyed at the back of her head, daydreaming of picnics under falling cherry blossoms while she'd daydream about getting getting her pink tortoise mounted by the hunky star quarterback for the school football team (let's call him Mike Henn). This is because Annabelle is a normal horny teenager and Sheldon is an ineffectual wiener. Naturally, Annabelle shacks up with some douchebag who drives a Mustang and says "yolo" a lot because he has an older brother who buys beer for him (normal horny teenagers are also extraordinarily stupid, you see). This devastates poor Sheldon to the point of existential despair. "How could this angel be so corrupted? This guy wasn't good enough, why can't she see how perfect we are for each other?!" he'd choke out to himself between sobs into his Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann body pillow. Later he'd share his plight on the internet, and all of his equally maladjusted /b/rothers would tell him that she's just a whore who was out to break his heart, and he needs to drop that bitch and get on with his life. Sheldon of course follows this advice and leaves poor Annabelle without who she thought was a great friend, all because she was a normal person who had the gall to not reciprocate the feelings of an unhealthily focused sperg. Sheldon is of course blind to the fact that he's merely a different kind of asshole for bailing on somebody solely because they don't have feelings for him, and instead picks up his guitar (the only thing he's good at) and writes nine songs about this horrible slut who broke his heart by committing the awful crime of being "indifferent".

What all that amounts to is BOO FUCKING HOO. The thing about Arsis is that they're probably the nerdiest non-USPM band on the planet, and I never understood why until really paying attention to the lyrics around this era of the band. Socially awkward kids can relate to the above story, they've all been there. Nearly everybody has seen the object of their affection trek down the dark path away from the purity we thought he/she embodied. Hell I've been there, because I too am a dork who had no idea how to be comfortable with himself until I stopped watching Naruto. You had unrequited feelings, welcome to being 15 years old, time to fix your stupid asymmetrical haircut and stop writing shitty poetry about it.

Now I realize that the previous ~600 words seem like a really unnecessary tangent, but really it's symbolic of what the album does to you. You are just constantly pummeled over the head with this extremely blunt message of "this girl is a whore and I'm an angsty twat" over and over again throughout the duration of the album. This is hard to ignore for a few reasons. One is that Malone isn't a very gifted lyricist. Most musicians writing a song with this theme would veil their finer details behind some sort of symbolism. This number about a demon rising from the depths to torment some poor shlub could well be an allegory for something else entirely. They could work with some clever imagery to get their point across. But no, Arsis just clobbers you in the gob with upfront accusations of manipulative sluttery. I get the feeling they tried to be somewhat clever, but the fact that Malone still refers to a vagina as a "wound" he wants to "be inside" shows that he's still got a few lifetimes worth of practice before he can call himself anything resembling a poet.

The second reason this is so distracting is paradoxically a good reason, United in Regret is catchier than herpes. One thing the band has always done right is that even at their most disjointed and confusing, they can always deliver a handful of songs that are a lot of fun to sing along with. Tracks like "Oh, the Humanity" and "The Cold Resistance" have real choruses that I find nigh impossible to restrain myself from rasping along with. The vocal patterns manage to be sing-songy and infectious despite being delivered in a harsh monotone, and that says something about Malone's songwriting ability. Namely it says that he's one of the flukiest and most accidentally brilliant songwriters this side of Jari Maenpaa. Unlike Jari, who is clearly good at writing one particular style of music and mediocre-to-shit at everything else, I can't really pinpoint what it is that Malone excels at. Nearly every Arsis song since the beginning of time has been a haphazard goulash of unrelated technical melodeath ideas that he strings together with noodly classical Necrophagist style solos, but a good chunk of the time (especially early in the band's history) he somehow finds the correct order in which to assemble these random parts. I'm convinced that A Celebration of Guilt is some kind of divine accident, where his dozens of unrelated ideas all fell into place flawlessly this one time on a count of beginner's luck. The intricate melodies and leadwork that has been the band's trademark since day one is still here on United in Regret, but the problem is that the album on the whole is a lot less cohesive than its predecessors. The slapdash songwriting just doesn't mesh well with this new sound.

New sound? Oh yeah, the production is wildly different here as well. Everything is considerably more muddy and incoherent than the crisp, trebly precision of the previous album and EP. The thing about this is that it doesn't make the album feel more organic (which I suspect was the reasoning behind trying to fix what wasn't broken), and instead makes it harder to follow and less sure of itself. The rhythm guitars especially sound muffled and chained in stark contrast to the crisp percussion that kicks through at nearly every opportunity. There's an odd fuzz surrounding all of the stringed instruments as well, and again it isn't an organic feeling element. I'm not saying this should be clinically clean or anything, but the music is surgically precise in it's approach, so it'd be nice if the production would allow the sound to express itself a bit more clearly.

And in the end, maybe it's a good thing that the production is working against the actual music, because compared to their earlier efforts, this is the album where Arsis started to go off the deep end and stop filtering themselves at all. I mean, there are so many instances where I can't help but feel like Riff X and Melody Y don't go together at all and I'm just finding myself disoriented with Drum Beat Z making things even more awkward. Seriously, the drumming is handled as if Brann Dailor and Flo Mounier decided to have a "Let's see who can give less of a fuck about keeping time" contest. There is no such thing as a solid beat presented anywhere, it's all fills and rolls and tossing the snare in a tumble dryer and crap like that. It's disorienting to a point where it never was before. The parts where the band reins itself in to a more traditional styled riff or chugging stomp like "Oh, the Humanity", "Lust Before the Maggots Conquest", or especially the chorus in the title track are actually very good, and this is indicative of the band as a whole. When Malone puts everything together as a band, some really neat shit can happen, but when everybody goes bonkers and tries to take center stage with their instrumental acrobatics, everything falls apart into a cacophonous mess. Even though Malone handles all of the guitars on this record, it still sounds like there are two different players playing two different parts at the same time, cattily swatting at each other in the studio as they fight to have the more prominent part.

Now as I stated earlier, I do indeed really like United in Regret. Every time I bring up a positive aspect I have a habit of saying "one thing the band has always been good at", but when I mention this next point I want to clarify that I mean THE thing the band has always been good at: Malone fucking slays at complex and intricate riff writing. Now I don't mean he plays what a less ambitious band would consider a solo as a verse riff, but I mean the riffs he crafts are one of a kind and unmistakably his work. The way he weaves an inherently strong melody into a simultaneously pummeling riff is nothing short of modern art. He takes the mindset of a traditional Gothenburg styled band like Dark Tranquility, and somehow transmutes their melodeath riffs into something where the rhythm and melody are being played by the same guy at the same time, but at double speed and with a sixth finger on his left hand. Check out "Lust Before the Maggots Conquest" or "I Speak Through Shadows" for prime examples of this phenomenal skill. I truly do believe that this stunning ear for melody coupled with the completely off the wall melotech riffs are a huge reason the band catapulted to popularity with their debut eight years ago, and it's all still in top form here.

All of the good bits mixed with all of the crummy bits make United in Regret a very memorable experience. I'll be the first to admit that A Celebration of Guilt is a better album (but then again the cover to that album looks like the Icon of Sin from Doom II, so it was destined to rule from the outset), but over the years I've found myself spinning United in Regret more often. It's this strange, oddly cut and grimy jewel. There is a ton of shit wrong with it, from the blunt force trauma of the crappy angsty lyrics to the disjointed mishmash of the songwriting, but it all amounts to a sort of character that their later releases sorely lack. The problems here really came to a head a few years later as the band toiled on, downwards into the realm of pink guitars and music videos featuring your long faced and stringy frontman windmilling in front of strippers in a trashed classroom and song titles as bewilderingly stupid as "Half Past Corpse O' Clock". But for what it is, United in Regret is only slightly less enjoyable than its predecessors, and while it's not the best starting point for new fans, it is at the very least fascinating in hindsight. This is where their sheen and prowess of heavily melodic technical death metal started to develop sores before falling into full blown leprosy on the following We Are the Nightmare. If nothing else, check out "The Cold Resistance" and tell me you won't have that chorus stuck in your head all day.

tl;dr - This album is the musical equivalent to that episode of The Office where Michael proposes to his girlfriend in front of all of his coworkers on their ninth date. It's just as painful of an experience just for the sheer vicarious embarrassment, but it's also just as much fun.


Originally written for http://lairofthebastard.blogspot.com/

United In Regret is a sophomore slump for a very talented band. The drumming and lead guitar work is good, but most of the guitar work and the production leave a huge gap between them. The songwriting is much weaker than Arsis, before and after this.

All of the songs feel like a mess in terms of songwriting and arrangement; while their debut managed to integrate great lead playing with solid rhythm work and prominent melodies, all of those seem to run together and fall apart several times in each song. The drumming and rhythm guitars don't seem to be in sync in terms of what they are doing most of the time. While they are in time together, the rhythm playing seems like "something is happening" and nobody is really sure what it is. There's tons of flashy lead work laid over the top, but it's all so damned disorganized that it hardly comes together in songs.

"The Marriage Bed" shows a strong contrast to similarly-styled riffing in the previous album, "The Face Of My Innocence". The song on the debut was very clear and tight, both melodic and percussive, and it sounded really cool. This album's guitar sound runs together more like I'd expect of doom metal where it might be good for everything to blend together, rather than the lack of clarity that loses most of what is going on in tech-death. The only thing that has much of a rhythmic feel is the drums, which have a really tight, fast sound while the attack of the guitar is painfully slow. The two don't sound together at all.

The production is simply awful. The lead guitar tone is alright, but the rhythm guitars are fuzzy and have very little clarity, so they lack the percussive sound that makes it easy to hear the cool rhythmic stuff that's happening. The guitar sound might be right for something much slower and atmospheric, but it's a terrible combination with fast, punchy drums that do sound right for this type of music. Both the songwriting and production seem lost and out of sync and doesn't sound like it's made for a fast, dynamic band, but the music is fast and dynamic, though disjointed. Eyal Levi hasn't produced much since this, likely an acknowledgement by everyone who heard this that he sucks.

This is Arsis' weakest moment: entirely forgettable and not a very good representation of what the band does.

There are many ways to experience Arsis’ brand of shred happy, technical metal. However, the approach that I took in starting with their overly ambitious 3rd effort “We Are The Nightmare” is not recommended, in no small part because it gives a false impression of this band. If one were to go by that release, he’d assume that this band was in it largely for lead guitar showboating and seeing how many drum fills could be fit into a song while maintaining something resembling a beat. But a careful examination of “United In Regret” will reveal a band that is still very active technically, but a bit more restrained and willing to let the vocalist and the riffs do some of the talking as well.

In contrast to the album that would follow, here there is not nearly the same level of difficulty in differentiating between the riffs and the solo sections, and what emerges generally tends to resemble a series of songs rather than a 35 minute plus session of virtuosic demonstrations. Melodically tinged bruisers like “Oh The Humanity” and “I Speak Through Shadows” are loaded with plenty of crunchy, Slayer influenced thrash elements, while taking well timed opportunities to throw in a few blurring harmonic passages to keep the listener guessing, and enough flashy solos to make Jeff Loomis blush. Other songs including “The Things You Said” and “…And The Blind One Came” rely on a greater element of repetition, and although imply something of a slower and gloomier character, continually showcase this band’s clever usage of simplistic melodic ideas alongside extravagant shred riffing.

The only area where Arsis really suffers any noticeable flaws is when they let the technical cat out of the bag too soon and allow him to run rampant even while James Malone’s blackened yet very intelligible shrieks are attempting to get the lyrics across to the listener. This particularly noticeable on “Lust Before The Maggots Conquest”, which sounds like a 3 ½ minutes of guitar soloing alongside about 1 minute of actual song. This approach could work well for the band if this were an instrumental and if there was a little more development of the 12 or 13 ideas that come and go. “The Marriage Bed” and “The Cold Resistance” are lesser offenders, and suffer more so from getting too flashy just a little too fast, leaving the listener with no real climax to look forward to after the midpoint of the song. If nothing else, all of this reaffirms the general tendency of a band’s evolution being incremental, as this approach of overdoing the lead work was the primary thing that hurt “We Are The Nightmare” as an album.

In spite of being a bit too fancy for the average fan of death metal, Arsis has put together a pretty solid album here that will treat fans of the likes of Brain Drill and Decrepit Birth pretty well. It’s a more exciting an animated alternative to the traditional crop still putting out orthodox albums in the melodic death style in the Gothenburg scene. But those who want the zenith of this band’s current body of work are encouraged to go back to “A Celebration Of Guilt”, which showcases the band with their keenest sense for putting songwriting first, although still keeping the flash and flair at a close second, followed by the still measured and well realized “A Diamond For Disease”.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on March 30, 2010.

I feel the major flaw with a lot of modern metal isn't that it's terribly bad, it's that it's frighteningly uninspired and mediocre. It doesn't shit on past efforts quite the way Lica does (they used to be Metallica, but Metallica - metal=Lica) but they still are substandard. Such is the case with United in Regret.

Many have said that this suffers from dull and uninspired riffs. While they are indeed present in rather threatening doses, there are actually quite a lot of great riffs and awesome solos. But the main flaw of United in Regret isn't the riffs themselves, but the fact that it's incoherent babbling. The riffs simply do not go together. There's none of the melodic development of A Diamond for Disease or A Celebration of Guilt. The songs don't evolve, they're just... "there." They don't do anything or go anywhere, they just sit there in the mess of wankery and click click click drums. Seriously, if you're gonna trigger your drums that damn much, use a goddamn Vdrum kit, or program them at least, because there's no point in using live drums if they sound so triggered they're fake and sterile. And get better samples, goddammit, because the drum sounds they use suck balls. And fire the drummer, he's sloppy and even though it's fast, what's the point of going fast if you're gonna be so sloppy?

Anywho, off that tangent, what this really sounds like is a shameless ripoff of Arsis, not the real thing. A Celebration of Guilt had a sound to it, and while A Diamond for Disease definitely sounded different, it still sounded unique and inspired. United in Regret sounds like a shameless and cheap ripoff of the aforementioned with none of the eloquence and subtlety. And where the heading comes from is that this is like an unexploded bomb. You see the potential, but it's not fulfilled. Everytime it sounds like it's going somewhere or getting good, it either goes into a frighteningly metalcore-ish breakdown, or it derails with an amelodic riff that comes out of nowhere. Either way, James Malone was definitely restraining his songwriting abilities here, and obviously didn't spend enough time in the conceptualizing process.

Stylistically, this is standard Arsis. Shrieked vocals (as opposed to growled), tapped and sweeped solos, fast but mostly melodic riffs, blasting drumming, and ever so irrelevant lyrics. But let's face it, Arsis were never the master lyricists, and the same shit about guilt, beautiful things, and faux-poetic analogies is present, but I never gave a shit about Arsis' lyrics because that's not what made them great. It's memorable riffs and well thought out songs, and that's what United in Regret is wholely lacking.

If you already have the previous two, get this, but seriously, I'm gonna join the hordes and say START OFF WITH A CELEBRATION OF GUILT, IT'S WAY WAY WAY WAY BETTER.

I have to say that I was eagerly awaiting the release of this album. Ever since A Celebration of Guilt, I was addicted to the fervor that this band created inside of me. With the release of A Diamond for disease, I knew that Arsis had changed and that the second album would be drastically different from the debut release.

I was not quite as dissapointed with United in Regret (formerly Lust before the Maggots conquest) as I was certain I was going to be. The album opens with thrash-influenced riffs and blast beats, which was to be expected from a band like Arsis. The lyrical concepts and vocal work are very reminiscent of old Arsis, which was a relief, to say the very least.

As I continued my journey through this album, I realized that it wasn't terrible. But it wasn't amazing. The guitar work is very predictable, and the attempt at a more progressive sound nearly disgusts me. The drumming is good, but that wasn't a surprise. Cesca is a good drummer, and I did not expect that to change between albums.

The most disappointing thing about United in Regret is the guitar solos. Malone's signature raw, raunchy sound was as good as dead. I hate to say this, but the solos on this album sound fake. They sound electronic. I realize that a good pick-sweeping solo is always a pleasure to the ear, but when it is done monotonously and without creativity, it can be a fucking nightmare on your ears.

Considering the album as a whole, it's not bad. In fact, I am impressed with Arsis's musical capabilites and melodic progressions that are key for their unique sound. If you are new to Arsis, please listen to A Celebration of Guilt first. Do not listen to this album unless you are truly acquainted with Arsis and their previous work.

No, I haven't heard the previous two releases, so I'm not going to be whining about how it doesn't live up to 'A Celebration Of Guilt' like so many people seem to be. Nor am I going to whimper about how Arsis' logo isn't on the cover (though I can't understand why the fuck that would be an issue anyway). So, all that aside, we have 'United In Regret', the second LP from the trendiest band in technical death metal next to Spawn Of Possession, Arsis. Well known for their... well, I don't really know, the words 'technical' and 'progressive' get thrown around a lot, so I guess those. Now, I can't personally see why this is so widely revered to be an amazing band; however, I can see why people enjoy it, and why it's a decent tech death album.

I don't care what other people say they sound like, because what I hear is the half-retarded incestuous lovechild of Dark Tranquillity, Anata, and Necrophagist. 'United In Regret' has some of the melodies and the vocals of the former, the obsession with with alternately paced guitar lines of the middle, and the classically-infused leads of the latter. The music is a moderately technical, moderately melodic variety of death metal that, while refreshingly devoid of 'sick breakdowns', still doesn't impress me as much as it seems to other people. Despite this, I'll give it significant credit for being a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the bland, derivative technical death metal bands that are floating around these days. Amazing what, oh, I think they call it 'songwriting', can do for an album, isn't it?

I'm not sure why, but the songs on here feel long as fuck for some reason, despite them all being just around three to five minutes long. Maybe it's due to the volume of stuff going on at any given moment; every song must have five hundred fucking riffs each. Of course, it's a crapshoot as to whether they're actually good ones. While there are some badass things going on in here, they're balanced out by portions that really seem to be here simply to give the songs more meat. There's more music than ideas, but at least it's not the insane case of a lot of bands these days: there's probably around three minutes worth of interesting ideas for a four minute song on 'United In Regret'. There also seems to be a pretty distinct dependence on technicality to carry the songs at times: I'd say that, really, the best parts of 'United In Regret' are when the band stops doing arpeggios and just allows themselves to make solid melodic death metal.

Apart from this, there's not much to say about this LP. Certainly most metal fans will have no problem giving this a listen; however, I'm not going to claim that Arsis is as legendary as they are claimed by many. But when als is said in done, 'United In Regret' is a solid, fairly enjoyable bit of death metal. It's just not incredible.

(Originally written for www.grindingtheapparatus.net)

When my friend introduced me to Arsis, I knew I'd fall in love with this band by the second or third song on their debut album. So, let that be a warning for you that this review is by a big fan.

I had goose bumps in anticipation for their next full-length album. And then I heard the samples from Willowtips site. 'Lust Before The Maggots Conquest' seems awkward and actually quite un-melodic. The opening riff, perhaps extremely technical and executed precisely, just doesn't sound good, which is sad coming from such a unique sounding band as Arsis.

The feeling I get from this album is that they had a couple things going against them: 1) Too many ideas, 2) trying too hard, and 3) I think the drummer and guitarist were trying to out-do each other, when it should've been more cooperative.

There are times when the underlying talent that these two guys possess does shine thru. Particularly, the subtleties in 'Hopeless Truth' and 'The Things You Said'. But in the end it just does not add up to the complex melodies of ACoG and DoD.

I'm disappointed in this effort, but it's not a bad album overall. You'll find lots of little gems throughout, but nothing spectacular along the lines of 'The Face of My Innocence.'

The new Arsis has been anticipated pretty highly for some time now. While receiving virtually no recognition in the metal media, Arsis has developed somewhat of a cult following in extreme metal's underground. After A Celebration of Guilt and A Diamond for Disease, Arsis became notorious for their brutal percussive drumming and guitar virtuosity, intertwining hundreds of death metal riffs with melodic harmonies and solos. After the 13 minute epic A Diamond for Disease, few could comprehend how a mere two guys could write such intricate, innovative metal.

United in Regret, while perhaps not quite up to par with their two previous releases, is another damn impressive release from Arsis. Extremely technical metal is a real hit-or-miss genre. Some bands come off as completely forward-thinking and mindblowing while others are nothing but a mass of clustered, noisy wankery. United in Regret manages to strike an artful balance between the melodic and catchy and the technical ends of the spectrum. Every song is jam-packed full of heavy riffs and astonishing lead guitar work from James Malone, not mention his perfect voice for such melodic death. Mike Van Dyne is certainly poised to become the next hailed drummer in extreme metal, given his lightning-fast yet incredibly smooth execution of double bass and blast beats.

Songs like Lust Before the Maggots Conquest show off the bands newfound affinity for writing Necrophagist-styled tech metal songs while others like The Cold Resistence are throwbacks to the band's days of A Celebration of Guilt. In the middle we have all-new sounds, such as the ominous chugging of ...And the Blind One Came and the psychotic tincture and musicianship of The Marriage Bed. Certainly songs like United and Regret and I Speak Through Shadows balance brutality, melody, and technicality beautifully.

United in Regret is really a natural progression of the technical melodic metal they produced in ACOG and ADFD. However, the album does have a couple minor quelms. Occasionally, Jim throws in some cringeworthy harmonies that sound as though he wrote during an acid trip. Also, at times (such as Lust Before the Maggots Conquest), the technicality of the music will be so blinding that it completely negates any melody, which is really the band's strong suit. Luckily for Arsis, they have more than sufficient competency in writing advanced, unique melodic death to make consistently impress and turn heads in extreme metal. If melodic death metal is your thing and you prefer to go beyond monotonous Gothenburg, Arsis is an excellent place to look. United in Regret is right on par with their past releases, if a little eccentric in comparison.

...or at least, what I expected.

I have been anticipating this release for about a year, before there were any plans for the album at all. I just wanted a new Arsis album. I preordered it from Willowtip the day it was available, and it arrived at my house yesterday. I had been listening to the two preview songs on the Willowtip website ("Lust Before the Maggots Conquest" and "Oh, the Humanity") obsessively for a few weeks.

Arsis is hard to define as far as genres go... but I think it is safe to say that they're death metal. They blend death metal with emotion and a strong atmosphere on every song they put out. They have breakdowns, solos, "chugging" riffs, screamed vocals, everything you'd want. The drumming on this record is as top notch as it was on both A Celebration of Guilt and A Diamond for Disease, and for those who have not listened to Arsis yet, there is strong double bass and well placed fills. The drumming is very energetic.

The guitar work has improved, with a lot of better solos, and some really cool riffs and breakdowns. The riffs in "Lust Before the Maggots Conquest", "The Things You Said" (an excellent Depeche Mode cover, featuring the guitarist of technical death metal band Daath), "The Hopeless Truth", and "Oh, The Humanity" are good examples of the strong improvement.

Production has improved greatly since their debut, "A Celebration of Guilt". The vocals are less buried in the mix, and it has basically, a more clear sound. Everything is noticeable, nothing buried under something else.

I wouldn't say this is BETTER than A Celebration of Guilt, but is a small improvement from A Diamond for Disease. This is the best album I've heard from 2006.

Stand-out tracks: Oh the Humanity, United in Regret, Lust Before the Maggots Conquest, The Marriage Bed, The Things You Said, The Hopeless Truth
9.5/10