Metal-Rules review of Vehemence

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Vehemence - God Was Created
August 2002 | Released: 2002, Metal Blade | Rating: 4.5/5 | Reviewer: JP

I haven’t been this impressed with a traditional death metal release since Nile hit the world five or six years ago. Metal Blade is maintaining their long-standing tradition of dabbling in gore-metal bands (Cannibal Corpse, Broken Hope, etc…) and they seem to have a knack for picking our some of the better ones.


Vehemence is an Arizona sick six man that has strong appeal because of youthful enthusiasm and engaging delivery of what is…quite understandably fairly standard death metal. The cover art and internal art is very gory and bordering on the cartoonish style with rotting zombies mutilating bodies and blood everywhere. Not as good as Wes Benscoter and not as “realistic” like Exhumed and Impaled, but very appealingly sick artwork nonetheless.


Lyrically the band tackles the topic of sex and religion (Steve Vai anyone?) in many of the songs. Titles like “She Never Noticed Me” and “I Didn’t Kill Her” exude that youthful angry, (heartbroken?) vibe that only a very angry, recently shunned person can come up with and make it sound sincere. Other tunes display a lack of respect (to put it mildly) for organized religion examples being the constant religious imagery spread through the songs. The lyrics are very interesting and very creepy, graphic mini-stories that are more fun to read than for example a Mortician song that is merely a list of mutilated body parts. The last tune “The Lord’s Work” is a neat compilation, lyrically of almost all the other songs. My favorite would have to be “I Must Not Live”, a story about a young man rejected who snaps and decides to get revenge by hiding in the girls bathroom at school and killing every girl who comes in, before ending his own life. Sick, sick stuff as good gore metal should be!


Musically this music just crushes but has many very diverse elements littered amongst the wastes of solid crushing old-school death metal. I’ll keep it shorter only to say, packaging, production, lyrics and great songs make this a strong contender for my Death metal album of the year. Rotted and fresh at the same time.
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Overall, a very good review. I know the splattergore lyrics are a part of this band, but like others, I think it would be interesting to see different elements of Nathan's lyrical writing come into play.