Savage or Grace

This album is not bad at all. It might not be outstanding and Sinister arguably do not top their "Cross the Styx" and “Diabolical Summoning” albums, but this is one piece of technical, brutal, fucking deathmetal!
The nagging about Rachel’s grunt is totally above my comprehension! I have seen this lady perform on stage with Occult several times and later with Sinister and believe me: she is a MONSTER (and I am not referring to her looks here…)!
Listen to the growls man, and if you wouldn’t know it, you would never believe this is a woman grunting her lungs out: very impressive, as all releases she has done this far! Her vocals are so brutal they make me shit my pants!
Well, in the end the critics have got what they want: in the resurrected Sinister Rachel no longer performs the vocal duties…

I have nothing more to add, all of you know Sinister, we live in the download era right now: I recommend the title track, “The age of murder”, “Conception of sin”, “Chapel desecration”, “Dominion”, “Collapse rewind” and the other two as well. Actually there is no bad song on this violent album. It is true that the bass drums sound a bit too thin, but don’t forget the pace is very high and this way you can really enjoy what is going on. The total production is very pounding and heavy: the bass is prominent and well audible.
The riffing is excellent and insane as always, the aggressive fast-forward rhythms make me jump around instantly: I cannot stay seated when listening to Sinister. I like this album better then it’s predecessor: 70 points for the less-inspired "Creative Killings" and 85 for this one!

I nearly can't believe that this is the voice of a woman but the shouter on Sinister is called Rachel, and you would never recognize that because this lady is grunting and shouting like most of those death metal lamers! I am just kidding, but a "chick" gets props from me, just for breathing...

Deep grunted vocals are paired with rough and deep shouted vocals, as I said unbelievable that this is a woman... and the line-up change for the guitarists position was again a step forward for the band.

Straight and hellish fast death metal is combined with heavy breakdowns and even some rare Swedish sounding guitar work.

But let's start at the beginning, the nine songs are introduced by an instrumental track which has an apocalyptical touch and it's the right preparation for the title-track "Savage or Grace". The song already shows Sinister in the best death metal tradition like it was played back in the days, fast and brutal. The third track is more playful and features some black metal riffs at the start of the song and also the rest of the song shows their fun side with a lot of tempo changes.
Besides more melodic guitar work there are also high-speed solo and staccato parts. The fifth song starts off with calm guitar playing and a very atmospherical sound but soon turns into another attack!

The whole "concept" of the album is that classical death metal joins forces with unique riffs and chugga-chugga breaks. "Savage or Grace" is a very good record and just ass-kicking, in just 30 minutes they offer hard-hitting death metal. Stop hating the girls that sing, they sing better than you and me probably anyways so... give this band a shot!

Savage or Grace is the latest offering from death metal veterans Sinister. I tried to get some background information on the band, but their official site is under construction, and all of the other sites I found haven't been updated in four or five years.

This is the first time I've had the opportunity to listen to Sinister, and if this album is any indication of what their previous albums sound like, this is going to be the first and last time I listen to the band.

At some points, this album wouldn't be too bad if it weren't for the outright horrid vocals. To me it seems like the band saw the popularity of other female-fronted death metal bands and decided to follow suit. The difference here is that most of those other female singers can actually growl on their own (that is, without the use of a vocal harmonizer) and do a pretty damn good job at it. It's sort of a spit in the face to those women actually putting forth an effort.

Some of the songs aren't too awful, but for the most part the music is just completely bland and uninspired. After the first track, which is by far the best instrumental I've ever heard on a death metal album, the band follows the same monotonous formula for the duration the remaining eight tracks. I guess when you've been around for a while, playing the same song repeatedly for the duration of an album, your fans will buy it and not complain about it.

The production of every song is wonderful until the vocals, distorion, bass guitar and drums kick in. If you're looking for a nicely produced album to listen to where you can tell the difference between instruments, stay far, far away from Savage or Grace. I wouldn't use the term muddy to describe it because I've heard worse, but it definitely isn't the type of production one would expect from a band like Sinister.

I guess if you've been following the band since the beginning and you like what they do, you'll want to pick this up. The rest of the world can and will be able to survive without it.