Malevolent Creation
The Ten Commandments

THE REVIEW

If you like Death Metal, you cannot help but like Malevolent Creation. "The Ten Commandments" is the album that officially marks the debut of the quintet. And what a debut!

Firstly, however, a couple of things need to be clarified: the first is that we are in Tampa, Florida, the land of Death Metal, in the prosperous year of 1991, with all the consequences and important musical events that every deathster should know; the second thing is that we are not dealing with a group of angry and inept teenagers, but we are facing Malevolent Creation, still considered history and legend of Death Metal, who with this debut album mark what was probably unanimously considered the happiest and most inspired episode of their career, along with the excellent "The Will To Kill".

While usually, in terms of a debut album, one tends to overlook a band, which usually presents more external influences than there should be and presents unoriginal songwriting, for Malevolent, a pleasant exception is made (oh dear, early Morbid Angel and Slayer appear in patches here and there, but nothing too influential), because the brilliant "Italian" guitarist Phil Fasciana, writer of all the riffs on the album, is more inspired than ever and seriously intends to show everyone that usually in the Death Metal scene they are highly critical of "newbies", that his band is on top form and wants to mark with this album its first appearance and simultaneously confirm within the panorama of Metallus Mortis.

The style in songwriting is highly original and unique, parts of pure speed that are very reminiscent of Thrash alternate with slower and more well-characterized mid tempos, thanks to a good drummer, Mark Simpson, who is promptly accompanied by a bassist, Jason Blachowicz, who, despite playing with a pick (and just this tends to discredit him), knows his stuff, following the lightning-fast riffs played at supersonic speeds by the “wall of sound” Fasciana/Juszkiewicz. The vocalist Bret Hoffman (might he be related to Deicide's axes? Who knows) flies over the landscape with his very distinctive voice, which tends to unsettle the most die-hard deathsters due to the lack of a true growl, being more oriented towards a “dark screaming” (sorry for the oxymoron, but I wouldn’t know how else to define it!) rather than a low, monotonous, and cavernous voice.

The voice, indeed: it is less “heavy” than that of other sacred monsters of the genre (Death, Morbid Angel, Sepultura, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Suffocation et al.) and it is precisely for this reason that the album is far more digestible and lighter than other contemporary releases in the Death domain.
The production is simply perfect even though slightly focused on guitars and vocals, unsurprisingly executed by the absolute master Scott Burns, a guarantee of quality, sound clarity and bass, when not more audible than the guitars, at least much more than perceivable (Scotty is the only one to understand how important this instrument is to obtain a complete, rounded, and compact sound in Death Metal).

The ten tracks/commandments contained in here are authentic anthems to Death Metal as well as historic pieces from the band that still feature prominently in the group's live setlists today, from the dark opening track “Memorial Arrangements” to the historic “Premature Burial”, up to the last, concluding title track of the group, ”Malevolent Creation”, passing through masterpieces such as “Remnants Of Withered Decay”, ”Multiple Stab Wounds”, ”Thou Shall Kill!” and ”Decadence Within”, just to list the best, but do not expect a drop in quality: there is no slightest sign of weakness or drop until the notes of “Malevolent Creation” gradually fade into your satisfied ears.

A masterpiece, in short, but also a manifesto of the less "all-smashing" and growling Death Metal: and it is precisely for this reason that I feel I can recommend this work even to those who are not accustomed to the genre, who, after getting “used” to the eardrum, can move on to considerably heavier, more violent, and less assimilable sounds (read: Cannibal Corpse...).