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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...).
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
04 Multiple Stab Wounds (03:34)
Honed adge of deceasement, carving the sign of evil bliss.
Body left perforated, innocent victim of a twisted sickness.
Face slashed beyond recognition, broken pieces fall form the skull.
Intestinally punctured, bleeding internally.
Bursting shocks of pain, exceed.
Subsequent mutilation, violence infests in a man.
Leaves him burning with anger, outburst from hell.
Suffer with every dying twitch, gored remains of the human shell.
No one left to hear your cries, burcher's soul fails to be satisfied.
Psychotic, deranged, abominated.
Multiple stab wounds, malefic incarnated.
Termination's tool bites unwilling flesh.
Infinite blood can never, can never quench.
Painful suffering attacks the mortal sie of real life.
Conscience hears only words advising it to strike.
Alliance with the blade, obsession bores into the mind.
Trail of violence without end, string of corpses left behind.
To avoid the capture of your many mentors.
Forever slicing life to sustain your own.
Burning sensation inflicted.
Leaving the body lacerated and bruised.
Emotions transpired as rage, leaving multiple stab wounds.
Overcome by the malevolence, deprived of an end without pain.
Corpse lies in an alley with inflictions, to rest you pray.
Psychotic, deranged, abominated.
Multiple stab wounds, malefic incarnated.
Termination's tool bites unwilling flesh.
Infinite blood can never, can never quench.
A soul infested with nihilist beliefs leaves it burning abhorred.
Evil intentions covered with disgust, possession undertakes its bloody chore.
Final strike of the mayhemic knife, as he lay gasping.
To become one with the ground.
The last to look upon his eyes is the next to adorn the assasin's crown.
05 Impaled Existence (03:25)
[`90 Demo Version]
Passing of black, looms over the entity,
Ill omen surrounding all positive thought.
The words of pain trickling off his tongue,
To hear him say this world is done.
Condemnation for the doomsayer,
The raking of hell's garden cultivates no prayer.
He laughs at the unholy blessing of terror,
Fermented in your mind.
Craving an end to existence,
Fleeing life's pleas of surviving,
The winds taste of death,
Set souls free.
Clouds impregnated, with the lust of despair.
Demons congregate, on the eve of strike.
Heaven is dormant, deaf to all cries.
Desperate fools will never find Christ.
Hateful spite lunges from the throat.
Spat upon helpless beings of peace.
Looming in the corridors that lie between time.
This world's broken neck grasped in his hands.
Dark secrets unlocked by a verbal key.
Promises once mocked are fulfilled fatalities precede.
Screams distorted with blood.
Reverberate through vacated lives.
Punished for ignorance.
Extinction is your sentence.
07 Sacrificial Annihilation (03:24)
Bone marrow twisted, white sockets shattered,
Black flesh blistered, hungry maggots grow fatter.
Tendons snap, cartilage corroding.
Contorted muscles flap, clotted blood flowing.
Circumstances beyond that of your feeble minds.
Helpless victims scream in fear, for they know of their finds.
Carcasses lie piled, some gaping, some rotted.
Yellow pus dripping, putrid and hottened.
Bluing flesh quivers, loosened and bloated.
Final stage of death, rigor mortis unfolded.
Faces of white staring right through you.
This hellish sight knows you're its own fool.
Your hell.
Odor of carrion is thick in the air.
Puddles of mucous, flesh starts to tear.
Innolation intruding on your body and souls.
Immoral adoration, extinction takes its toll.
Viewing this onslaught before me.
Its beauty is soo f**king rare.
Take one look and you will see.
Devastation wrought with precision and care.
From his fist, swift death is dealt.
Your head up your ass, much pain is felt.
Body all twitching, brain nerves dead,
In a flick of his eyes, your maker's met.
Sacrificial, sacrificial, sacrificial, annihilation (X3)
Sacrificial annihilation.
Panic has stricken, stiff bodies abound.
Your need to escape, but the means are not found.
Tiny little flesh creatures flee for their lives.
From the plasm he returns, now it's time to die.
Sacrificial, sacrificial, sacrificial, annihilation (X3)
Sacrificial annihilation.
Mutilation, asphyxiation, dying by my grasp.
Futile moves made by you to stop me in my tracks.
Don't you know now as your limbs grow cold.
I am your destruction.
Sacrificial annihilation.
08 Decadence Within (04:21)
Cruor falls upon a disobedient time.
Holocaust claims the weak and feeble lives.
Sickness wells, bursting within.
No escape from the bludgeon, except to give in.
Deep depression enters your mind.
Premeditated oppression conquers all thought.
Striving with little reason to be.
A wretched subject of this cryptocracy.
The wreath which is weaving, woven full of lies.
Bore out of teachery, it snuffs out your cries.
Spawn on this Earth, to bring out suffering.
Avaricious hunger fulfills its voracious legacy.
A say we don't have, where it's written we shall.
Your life stripped away, destined to fall.
Wanting to die for your faith.
Everything you are is laid to waste.
Blood falls free from your open wounds.
Sets souls free to complete doom.
Dying and killing for your crimes.
Forever your eyes are smitten blind.
Economical structure falls from our grasp.
Just the beginning to the core that's now cracked.
Fractures inflict the corporate level.
Wickedness infest life's everyday drivel, drivel.
Cities lie fallen, broken with disgust.
Citizens mangled with deceit and mistrust.
Crimson tide swells, flowing through the streets.
Decadence, the swift end that you will meet.
Eyes blackened blind to these lustful crimes.
Decency falters and is all left behind.
Nothing left for your, except fear for the world.
Evil abounds as the darkness unfurls.
Can't see no reason for what really matters.
Nothing on this planet can outlast it.
Cold outstretched hands reach for the sky.
Decadence surrounds all that will die.
Decadence, despair falls on your faith.
Why doesn't God hear your prayers?
Decadence remains the only thing for you.
Self pity and denial, play you for its fool.
Evil takes your life, beckon to its call.
Evil claims your souls, laughing at its fall.
Laughing as you fall.
10 Malevolent Creation (05:30)
Awaken in sweat, my skin chilled and cold.
May have seen my own death, but can't see what I know.
Attemp to piece it together, illusions of the mind.
Dark starts to alter formations of my find.
Fulmination termination of your life to be.
Malignant euseration that the body cannot flee.
Lachessis upon you signing your epitaph.
Extinction of humanity is far too much to grasp.
Malevolent hatred of life, seeing death fall from the sky.
Resisting the view from my eyes,
Receiving pleasure from watching you die.
Martyrdomic terror flash through yellowed eyes,
Purgatoric laughter fills your hallowed cries.
We are all participants of this malevolent creation.
Streaks of red flying through your tortured mind.
Crowds of undead trying to see unheard crimes.
Blasphemy achieving sadistic malicious intent.
Society is hanging on to greed and selfish threads.
Insidious demon debilitating all souls.
Warmongers infiltrating, blood heavily flows.
Ravenous leaders try to determine our fate.
To these gluttonous regimes we must assassinate.
Malevolent hatred of life, seeing death fall from the sky.
Resisting the view from my eyes,
Receiving pleasure from watching you die.
Martyrdomic terror flash through yellowed eyes,
Purgatoric laughter fills your hallowed cries.
No one can destroy this malevolent creation.
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Other reviews
By Insect_Reject
The rhythms, furious and violent, are at times interspersed with brief but violent mosh breaks that make you shake your head frantically.
A real blow to the head, as well as a must for all lovers of Death Metal and all of Extreme Metal.
