Deathcult Barbaric Hell

Ampütator's full-length. It pretty much sounds like their demo but with even more starkly raw/clean production, with all the distortion now seemingly provided by the synthetically overdriven guitars. It's all louder and clearer but superficially 'harsher' as well. I can't get over how bizarre the production is, it's like some major label engineer got hired to make a raw black metal album.

It's about as uninteresting as the demo and to be honest the band has developed essentially zero percent since that work. It's the same thing all over again: black/thrash riffs, monotonously screeched vocals, blasty, filly drum machine, the works. It still has that sense of relative catchiness, and fairly average riffwork. It's really modern black/thrash by numbers. I don't fully grasp why this band has managed to attain such popularity. The guys in this band are clearly capable at constructing relatively fun black/thrash, but it's certainly not anything notable or unique. Plus, the feel of triteness is still there, and I'm not into that.

It's listenable and it doesn't offend me, but it doesn't excite me at all either. The band didn't change at all in the two years between the releases I own, and that's cool if you're Bolt Thrower, but not when you're very plain black/thrash. I guess if you like this stuff you should get this but I don't clutch Aura Noir albums and silently cry myself to sleep.