Pestilence – Resurrection Macabre
Mascot Records – 16 March 2009
By Simon Brand
After sixteen whole years of downtime since their ill-received Spheres album, Pestilence present to us their new offering, Resurrection Macabre. Now, sixteen years is a long time, so what – you may ask yourself – has changed in the land of Pestilence? Patrick Mameli has shed all of the other members who were present on Spheres and re-hired the magnificent Tony Choy and the prolific Peter Wildoer to assist him for the new album. Also – to the relief of many – gone is the prominent jazz-fusion influence from their previous release in favour of a more straightforward death metal sound.
Unfortunately for this album, “straightforward” is the perfect word to describe the majority of the contents. Death metal has come a long way since Pestilence last graced out ears, but apart from the obvious production quality increase, the band seems to still be stuck in the past, playing chuggy, repetitive riffs which don't really stick in your head for even minutes after you hear them. There are some interesting sections, such as the spacey interlude in the title track and some of the jazzy solos are pretty intriguing, if not a bit out of place given the rest of the context and generic structures are the norm.
Mameli's vocals have also changed on this record, featuring much more guttural growls than on their other albums, which works rather well alongside the rest of the instruments. One thing that really gets on my nerves is how he finds the need to growl the name of the song repeatedly at the beginning of it. It's like every song is so similar he needs to remind himself and the band which track they're playing this time. Also, this record is quite a step back from Spheres lyrically speaking. I found the more space-oriented phrases in their previous album such as “An endless galaxy of time zones, dimensions, preserve the astral secrecy” far more desirable than the gory ones found in Resurrection Macabre, like “Slice my flesh up to maim, suppressed by medication, help me”. Keeping up the straightforward appearances I see.
Peter's drumming is pretty impressive here; lots of effective fills and fitting rhythms. He does, however, seem to place blast beats in completely arbitrary positions in the songs, being especially drawn to putting them anywhere that they would sound out of place. Nice job.
Mameli's riffing, as previously stated, comes off as pretty uninspired here. Except for the one at the beginning of 'Synthetic Grotesque', I couldn't recall a single riff from the whole release after hearing it three times over.
Here I come to one of my other main gripes about this here CD. Tony Choy is really a fantastic bassist – one of the best under the entire metal umbrella in my opinion – but he is completely wasted here. I'm not able to write much about his playing because I can honestly barely hear it, he's so far down in the mix that he may as well have sat and gave Mameli notes about his songwriting skills for the recording process.
Although I have had a lot of negative things to say about this album, I don't necessarily think it's bad as such, just average, and from one of death metal's big names, this is not something to be happy about. If it were a new band, I would probably say that they have potential and I look forward to hearing what they can do in a few years time, but that is not the case, so I instead hope Pestilence will just leave it at that and not tarnish their reputation with an re-iterations of this release. And for God's sake, don't do another Spheres
Official Pestilence Website
Official Pestilence Myspace
Official Mascot Records Website
Mascot Records – 16 March 2009
By Simon Brand
After sixteen whole years of downtime since their ill-received Spheres album, Pestilence present to us their new offering, Resurrection Macabre. Now, sixteen years is a long time, so what – you may ask yourself – has changed in the land of Pestilence? Patrick Mameli has shed all of the other members who were present on Spheres and re-hired the magnificent Tony Choy and the prolific Peter Wildoer to assist him for the new album. Also – to the relief of many – gone is the prominent jazz-fusion influence from their previous release in favour of a more straightforward death metal sound.
Unfortunately for this album, “straightforward” is the perfect word to describe the majority of the contents. Death metal has come a long way since Pestilence last graced out ears, but apart from the obvious production quality increase, the band seems to still be stuck in the past, playing chuggy, repetitive riffs which don't really stick in your head for even minutes after you hear them. There are some interesting sections, such as the spacey interlude in the title track and some of the jazzy solos are pretty intriguing, if not a bit out of place given the rest of the context and generic structures are the norm.
Mameli's vocals have also changed on this record, featuring much more guttural growls than on their other albums, which works rather well alongside the rest of the instruments. One thing that really gets on my nerves is how he finds the need to growl the name of the song repeatedly at the beginning of it. It's like every song is so similar he needs to remind himself and the band which track they're playing this time. Also, this record is quite a step back from Spheres lyrically speaking. I found the more space-oriented phrases in their previous album such as “An endless galaxy of time zones, dimensions, preserve the astral secrecy” far more desirable than the gory ones found in Resurrection Macabre, like “Slice my flesh up to maim, suppressed by medication, help me”. Keeping up the straightforward appearances I see.
Peter's drumming is pretty impressive here; lots of effective fills and fitting rhythms. He does, however, seem to place blast beats in completely arbitrary positions in the songs, being especially drawn to putting them anywhere that they would sound out of place. Nice job.
Mameli's riffing, as previously stated, comes off as pretty uninspired here. Except for the one at the beginning of 'Synthetic Grotesque', I couldn't recall a single riff from the whole release after hearing it three times over.
Here I come to one of my other main gripes about this here CD. Tony Choy is really a fantastic bassist – one of the best under the entire metal umbrella in my opinion – but he is completely wasted here. I'm not able to write much about his playing because I can honestly barely hear it, he's so far down in the mix that he may as well have sat and gave Mameli notes about his songwriting skills for the recording process.
Although I have had a lot of negative things to say about this album, I don't necessarily think it's bad as such, just average, and from one of death metal's big names, this is not something to be happy about. If it were a new band, I would probably say that they have potential and I look forward to hearing what they can do in a few years time, but that is not the case, so I instead hope Pestilence will just leave it at that and not tarnish their reputation with an re-iterations of this release. And for God's sake, don't do another Spheres
Official Pestilence Website
Official Pestilence Myspace
Official Mascot Records Website
