The Forbidden

The Forbidden contains good content for what it is (considering it only has 4 tracks, 3 of which are actual songs). The album starts out with some sort of monologue called “Intro (Sick)”, which I couldn’t quite make out that is somewhat eerie, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. I can’t complain about the fact that it only has 3 tracks considering it’s only an extended play. Spawn of Possession is known as a Brutal Technical Death Metal Band, but this EP is really just regular Brutal Death Metal, with a touch of Grind in it. Even though Spawn of Possession has received more fans now, I was surprised at the production value for this EP, because it was their first piece of material ever released when they were virtually unknown, and the sound quality was excellent.

The lyrical content is what’s expected of a Brutal Death Metal album, Gore, Death, the Undead etc. The singer is really guttural, and the vocals go with the guitar pretty well, which is mostly fast, and clearly complex heavy riffs, but I wouldn’t say it’s so technical to be called Tech Death (as they later progressed to). Every solo on the album is extremely fast, and makes use of sweep picking. It goes good for brutal death metal, but I was kind of surprised there wasn’t one note you could hear for more then a millisecond. Sure that just proves the guitarists skill, but I’d have liked to see a little bit more style. The drums on every track have at least a couple crazy fast blast beats, again typical, but not bad. I noticed one or two breakdowns on the alum, which was also good, and the drummer also used to some extent, complex double bass every now and then.

Over all, it’s good EP, nothing amazing that stuck out to me compared to other average Brutal Death/Grind albums/EP’s, but it is satisfying when you are in the mood for some brutality.

The Forbidden, the first release from the overtly technical death metal band Spawn Of Possession demonstrates just how the band began with a certain style, and have stuck with it. It's an EP, and there are only three songs, and they're only 4 minutes long each, which is one of the weaknesses here, but this weakness is nicely offset by the vastly superior production job than on the full lengths (namely Noctambulant). The band was yet to get caught up in the craze of having guitars sound like the disgraceful Necrophagist, and instead have a quite clear, yet heavy and aggressive death metal tone. Everything other than guitars sounds the same as the high-budget recordings, so you won’t have to put up with any bad sounding vocals or patchy drumming. Hell, the vocalist sounds exactly the same as who ever did them on the other releases. The better guitar sound makes the whole experience of the EP an enjoyable and natural album; to be honest this is the sole difference from this EP to what they are like now.

Unfortunately, the complete lack of anything else new or interesting to check out really makes this EP redundant.

To those who are wondering, the band's technical ability was fully functional already, as was their song writing style. Basically, these songs sound like the stuff you'd hear on the full lengths, in fact, two of the three songs on here ended up on Cabinet. The Forbidden sounds considerably heavier, and I find the occasionally annoying pinch harmonics on the "Cabinet" version are nicely toned down, although the harmonies are less apparent, still, I prefer this sound. Same goes for Dirty Priest, honestly, bands need to stop treating us like children and let us find the complexities and harmonies by ourselves. Oddly, the track which I see to the best on here, "Dead & Grotesque" didn't get put on a full length until Noctambulant, where the horrible tone was present more than I can stand. Unfortunately, this makes this EP less of a desired object. Unlike many bands, where finding an EP before the band got big would show you something interesting as to how they've changed, The Forbidden shows how much Spawn Of Possession haven't. It's exactly what you expect from the band, just with better (although not as clean) production, and frustratingly shorter.

Still, while all bar the intro are old tracks, the songs do sound better than the album versions, there's still heaps of interesting guitar melodies and harmonies, and the same technicality which makes this band stand out. They just have a little bit more life to them, but not really enough to get to stop you from noticing it's just the same song as the album version, just heavier. It's a tiny Spawn of Possession album, which is enjoyable, just don't expect anything more.