MALEVOLENT CREATION - The 13th Beast
Century Media Records
Over the years I can honestly say that my opinion of MALEVOLENT CREATION's musical output has not been stellar. On a high note their first two releases, 1991's The 10 Commandments and Retribution released the following year, are damm good. I highly recommend you find them if you do not own them already. But after that it seemed the magic died and they just coasted along. I once made the analogy that if the big four bands of Florida's death metal legacy were wheels on a car then MALEVOLENT CREATION would be the spare tire.
Now of course after those releases the band had a never ending revolving door band line-up which did not help them one bit. Their sole original member, guitarist Phil Fasciana, just found replacements when needed. Even vocalist Brett Hoffmann, who sadly passed away last year, left the band twice during their heyday. So for a while (aka: over a decade) they kinda disappeared from the radar. Then in 2010 MALEVOLENT CREATION came out with Invidious Dominion and it was a return to their early death thrash style. I thought it was a fantastic album. I highly recommend it. And then it all went to hell again. Another lackluster release in 2015, Dead Man's Path. And then the death of vocalist Brett Hoffmann last year.
So here we have The 13th Beast and the band having a restart. Yes other than mainstay, guitarist Phil Fasciana, this is yet another new line-up different from their last full length. Starting off with new vocalist / guitarist Lee Wollenschlaeger, the guy has a good death metal voice. At times he reminds you of Hoffmann minus the hideous snarl or the devilish contempt. Wollenschlaeger, on a whole, sounds monotonous in his delivery. As far as the music goes it's brutal as needed, the riffs are all competent sounding as far as mid to late 90's death metal 101 goes. The rhythm section battles it's way onward. The bottom line is that the new 2019 version of MALEVOLENT CREATION does hit the ground running on The 13th Beast. Unfortunately they're running backwards.
https://www.centurymedia.com/
https://www.facebook.com/malevolentcreation
No comments:
Post a Comment