RESURRECTION MACABRE

I must admit that I was disappointed the first couple of times I heard this album. It's my own fault, since I had expected something along the lines of "Spheres" or "Testimony of the Ancients" which were fairly experimental and progressive, the former even containing guitar synths and fusion jazz elements. Instead "Resurrection Macabre" is a straight death metal album, and perhaps the most brutal effort ever from the band, some songs even containing grindcore style blastbeats.

The album has grown on me, and I quite like it now, and although I prefer the "Spheres"-style, I can also appreciate Pestilence's sort of retrospective new musical direction which draws on the styles of all of their previous releases as well as on more recent brutal death metal. There are some progressive elements on the album which are vaguely reminiscent of the "Spheres" stuff, such as a couple of interesting jazz chords-based riffs that pop up here and there, but the most progressive elements are found in the guitar solos many of which draw on jazz fusion related scales and techniques rather than just shredding and tremolo arm action (not that there's anything wrong with shredding and tremolo arm action at all), which makes them interesting to listen to.

The sound has a very shap and metallic quality - a very edgy metallic sort of guitar distortion - which works to Pestilence's advantage.

While this album certainly has its moments, and many of them, I think that' at the end of the day, not a lot of progheads will appreciate it at all. A lot of fans of tech/prog extreme metal probably will (although those who expected a "Spheres II" are in for a disappointment), and I'm sure that it'll strike gold with many fans of old school death metal, especially fans of Pestilence's early works.