Deicide
To Hell With God

For years now, let's say since the late nineties, death metal enthusiasts already know what to expect with every Deicide release: at best, an album that offers a satisfying dose of brutality without deviating much from the style of the early records by Benton and company; at worst, a weak product, a shadow of the band's former power, an obviously fast and aggressive death but lacking the sinister aura and sulfuric miasmas that marked their beginnings. Whether this is a good or bad thing is subjective: listeners seeking new sounds, convinced that extreme metal should open up to other solutions and take the experimental route to avoid stagnation, have probably abandoned Deicide long ago, while the first-hour fans, lovers of hard and pure Floridian death, will continue to renew their pact with Glen Benton's cult. If you belong to this last group of deathsters, "To Hell With God" will certainly be to your liking.

The CD is meticulously presented from the cover image (created by the artists at Grim Twins Studio), "very 'bbrutal," a real hit if you're under fifteen: it depicts, as the title says, Christ in hell, silhouetted against a burning sky and surrounded by a horde of cheerful skeleton-zombies among whom we can certainly imagine the friend Glen, who was already chanting "in hell I burn" twenty years ago (to show how the imagery hasn't changed).

Let's immediately say that there are no major innovations; nearly all the elements of Deicide's typical sound are present (the one, to be clear, crystallized in works like "Once Upon The Cross"), from the blast beats alternating with mid-tempos (a true hallmark of ours) supported by the ever-present double bass, to the tight and threatening riffs, all "empowered by blasphemy," reinforced by Benton's iconoclastic and fiercely anti-Christian lyrics, whose voice, now modulated in a cavernous roar, now in a razor-sharp scream, still stands its ground against the new blood of extreme metal, despite being over forty. As for the lyrics penned by good ol’ Glen, there are no particular subtleties; we're far from the more pretentious texts that Sanders or Nergal might produce; the approach is always the same, rough and reckless, more devoted to trashing poor Christians ("fuck your god's conviction...") than to discussing ancient Egyptian or Sumerian mythologies.

However, while there are no new ingredients added to the usual concoction prepared by us, there is certainly that freshness and that minimum amount of inventiveness that allow at least to distinguish one song from another, one album from another, although at times there's a distinct sense of déjà vu. Much of the credit goes to Asheim, who is particularly inspired in the songwriting, teamed up with Jack Owen (for the less informed, the guitarist of Cannibal Corpse from the formation until 2004) in composing some tracks, like the excellent "Angels Of Hell," infused with a certain groove that isn't so easy to spot in a Deicide piece. Among the episodes that stand out from the first listens, I'd mention the title-track (very powerful and supported by a catchy chorus), "Convinction" (written by Owen), the already mentioned "Angels Of Hell," "Witness Of Death," "Hang In Agony Until You're Dead" — but the whole album is, in its compactness, on a good level. For an example of the sound of this album, take the closing "How Can You Call Yourself A God": the song opens with a dissonant chord overshadowed by Santolla's melodic shredding, then unfolds along thrashy rhythms that, at regular intervals, accelerate to a paroxysm, passing through a chorus in which Benton obsessively declares his wicked slogan. What convinces the most is anyhow the malice and compactness with which they play, helped by an extremely clear production that manages to give the right depth to each instrument, highlighting the maelstrom of guitars and percussion without drowning out the voice and bass.

"To Hell With God" is therefore an enjoyable work (as I said at the beginning, one of those albums that, without offering major innovations, gives some good ideas and a bit of healthy ferocity), endowed with a good appeal and the right polish, and is also a pleasant confirmation of the good path our guys embarked on after the turn with "The Stench Of Redemption." The Deicide, it must be said, are certainly not the standard-bearers of the movement, they are no longer at the forefront of either pure brutality nor, even less, of experimentation or fusion with other genres; however, if it's right for death metal to have its historic bands, capable of carrying forward the original style with renewed vigor, to exert a strong attraction on the audience and to make enthusiasts debate, the diabolical Deicide can very well embody this role, and "To Hell With God" is here to prove it. The overall score is a full seven, rounded down in the rating.