Malevolent Creation
Stillborn

And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I have always thought of this aphorism by the German philosopher when observing the cover of the third album by the Americans. The black abyss, an infinite whirlpool without a bottom ready to suck in everything that dares even to get close. "Stillborn" immediately evokes death, from the title of the work: the stillborn or something terribly similar.
We are in 1993 and Death Metal is spreading with cynical violence all over the world; staying only in the United States, it is the year of Morbid Angel's "Covenant" and Death's "Individual Thought Patterns." A few months earlier, Obituary had released that very dark masterpiece that was "The End Complete." Malevolent Creation do not want to be left behind; they accept the challenge and bring forth their so-called attributes. They release a record of frightening physicality and compactness.

They leave behind the Death-Thrash of their beginnings, which musically reminded of Slayer from the late eighties and early nineties, and forge a grim and direct sound: uncompromising Death Metal. Ten songs for about forty nervous and hellish minutes. To make an immediate comparison, we are halfway between the dark heaviness of Obituary, the intricate and decayed riffs of Morbid Angel, and the frenzied delirium of fellow citizens Cannibal Corpse.

A cemetery intro of a few seconds and then the pestilential flood of the track that malignantly opens the work begins: "Dominated Resurgency" with its uninterrupted tempo changes and the dissonant and tangled guitar solos of the lethal duo Rubin - Fasciana. Four visceral minutes of black auditory orgasm, the best track of the batch.
"Dominion of Terror" only magnifies that sense of claustrophobia felt throughout the work. With some passages that are more cadenced, suffered, slow, and obsessive; until the finale where they return to increase speed: Mephistophelian. A dominion of pure terror (just translate the title to get the idea of the track's magnitude).

What immediately catches the ear is a greater staticity and less dynamism compared to the historical previous album “Retribution,” where Death Metal completely shed its Thrash influences and rushed ahead, devastating everything in its path. In “Stillborn,” however, the execution times slow down—not absolutely, just a little—but just enough to characterize this group's work differently. This choice, decidedly contrary to contemporary bands like the aforementioned Cannibal Corpse, Immolation, Suffocation, the Canadians Gorguts, and all those others who, by frenetically flooring the accelerator pedal, would soon create Brutal Death Metal, is probably the cause of the bad reputation that surrounds this album; a brief browse online reveals a multitude of negative reviews of “Stillborn.” Do not, however, be influenced; the quality of the work is very high, after all, it saw the light in the golden age of the genre, even though it does not reach the heights of its two predecessors.

The main flaw, the only one against which one can point the finger, is the overly monotone production, which significantly penalizes the vocal performance of singer Brett Hoffmann, which is in turn too monotone, set, always the same, something that did not happen in “Retribution,” despite having the same approach, moreover, the slower tracks, especially the title track, where in the intro the handbrake is really pulled, are not supported by the right atmosphere. In short, the work behind the console could have been done much better, not surprisingly the group wanted to return to rely on the sage Scott Burns, guru of Floridian Death Metal, but Roadrunner Records refused financial support, and not only: after the poor sales, they even dropped the band!

When all is said and done, and despite the label, “Stillborn” remains one of the most violent records in all of Death Metal.