Nostradamus

Three years following the sophomore record that was damn near identical to the smashing debut, Divine Empire decided to drop something that steered away from the same formula. Nostradamus did what thrash metal did about a decade earlier, and injected a hefty amount of groove to the ingredients. The death metal backbone is still fully in tact, and if anything the speed and intensity was brought up even more.

However, that doesn't exactly equate to something better. There is definitely a point with drum pummeling and speed riffing where it starts to lose the soul of the music in exchange for sheer brutality. Thankfully the entire disc isn't flooded with the groovier takes, because rest assured that it would have sank even lower had that been the case. So if anything, this actually works as a standout feature. That aside though, shoddy writing makes itself visible enough. "Sacrifice In Vain" opens up the record and shows us right away what we're in for, and although it's tight, I can't really call it memorable.

Other songs like "Manifestation" flat out annoy me thanks to overdoing the pinch harmonics to extreme degrees. To the opposite, there are some really impressive parts. Amidst all of the overbearing wall of sound, there are actually some progressive fossils deep in the dirt. "Tribulation" places some of these passages very well, and come out even brighter when backing the solo. It may sound like a train-wreck on paper when mixing it with the grooves, but a lot of Nostradamus does wind up working well. Considering it also doesn't even touch thirty minutes, I'd say it's worth at least a spin.

Metal music has long been like a nursery school child's playroom clay, constantly pounded away at until all of the characteristics become dulled and indistinguishable from that of the next tyke. As sad as it is to hear, this is most often the case within the more extreme ends of the genre, namely death and black metal, and Divine Empire is yet another (unwitting) culprit of the form. Their first two albums were not half-bad, possessing at least a few moments of compensation for the time spent examining their contents, but the buck stopped upon the third full-length Nostradamus, an album I feel hard pressed to distinguish from several of its peers. If you told me this was a new Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal or even Malevolent Creation CD, I would be forced to agree with you until seeing contrary evidence.

It's got the same mix of blasted hostility and percussive grooving that the last did, but also too often reminds me of something Morbid Angel might have written on Domination, Gateways to Annihilation or Formulas Fatal to the Flesh. The downtuned guitars are so overt here that they often remind me of Korn or Mudvayne when they hit a breakdown, even if the chugging structures are not quite the same. Some of the songs, like "They Rise" are so chocked with vapid and disinterested chugging rhythms that I find them almost torture to sit through, leaving the album to survive on its faster, octave fueled rhythms akin to Hate Eternal's Conquering the Throne. Divine Empire was on its third drummer in three albums here, with Duane Timlin (of numerous other acts) stepping in to replace Alex Marquez, who apparently had some fallout with Jason Blachowicz resulting in the ode "Cuidate del Traidor", with some less than flattering, and frankly sucky lyrics. In fact, all of the lyrics on Nostradamus are pretty weak, another area in which the Floridians fail to really stand out...

So, with bass too loud, dearth of staying power in almost every track on the album, and lyrics that are little more than poop, is there any reason to be excited over this album? Certainly not the dull ass cover art. In truth, there are a handful of tracks which pummel enough of a solid death/thrashing that you won't yawn too much: "Season of Extinction", "Basher" and "Cuidate del Traidor", but even these I wouldn't mistake as the kind I'd want to experience repeatedly. I kept hanging on, knuckles white for that one explosion to justify this album's existence, and it never arrived. Nostradamus suffers from that 'me too' syndrome which is especially noxious within the folds of 21st century death metal: not enough brutality to outdistance its contemporaries, not enough songwriting ability to muster even cult classic status. Doesn't suck. Doesn't succeed. There is simply nothing to see here, and it's time to move along.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

I am going to make this short and to the point. I know there is a lot of death metal out therre that doesn't quite make par with all of the other bands out there possibly doing something original (though that is highly unlikely).

Now this album has the fucking brutality, the fieriness, and the sting that makes a Death Metal release all that much better. The guitars groan and squeal under their players like some kind of fucked up machine. They add an incendiary appeal to the music. And while in most DM bands the bass is thrown to the background (in my experience), this album utilizes the bass perfectly. It adds intensity to the album rather than just adding a low tone. And the drums, are pretty damn good too. What with the tempo changes and speed and the seriousness they produce. This is the kind of metal you want to be listening to on your way down the highway just so you can flip people the horns and show up fags with rap systems. This album is a must for all fans of extreme music not only for the classicness of the album itself, but for the credible music being played on it.