DECEASE - Exhort to Obliterate

Released on 17 February 2013, the debut album of the Cluj-based band Decease can be seen as a breath of fresh air in the Romanian metal landscape. I have to admit I have not listened to the albums of other bands who have tried their luck with thrash in the last 4-5 years, and I would mention here Cyborg and Rezistor. I found a few elements at Bolthard, and the EP Murder Is Only Flesh Deep of Snapjaw (now broken up) is one of the few old school thrash metal releases around here. We will not discuss the quality of these records here, but I’ve tried to go through some names that have played thrash metal during the last years. It seems, and I’m happy about it, that this genre is starting to gain a well-deserved popularity in Romania, and bands such as Spinecrusher, Crossbone and of course Decease can be indeed a beacon of hope.

Going back, Exhort to Obliterate consists of nine thrash metal songs complemented by a voice coming from death metal (the band’s guitarist and vocal Radu Vulpe is one of the members of the brutal death metal band Necrovile), and little groove insertions. 

The album starts with Decline, an instrumental intro that reminded me of …Machine Head. My thoughts ran to Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies from Burn My Eyes released in 1994, a very influential album for the groove metal movement, and this sound seemed at first a bit strange in the context of a thrash metal album.  An almost 3-minute long song marching on a groovy rhythm that keeps repeating, as if the band is having a rehearsal for the real start of the album.

Mentally Infested blows away all fears, it is a thrash metal affair with a fast rhythm, where the drums burst in with short beats, and the riffs give us the speed that we need. And over all this, Radu Vulpe’s guttural voice declaiming about an apocalyptical society where the individual is treated as a slave and there is no escape. The explosive solo made me remember Kreator and their surprises on their excellent Terrible Certainly in 1987. I’m referring especially to Storming with Menace where there is a progression until the solo bursts out. Pretty much the same thing happens on Mentally Infested, and the album opens perfectly for the next two songs, Boiling Hatred and Hypocrisy Unknown. As fast, in the same vein, thrash metal a little crushed under the pressure of the death metal voices, but extremely energetic, with lyrics about our solitude in a closed and oppressive society. Lyrics also protest against false democracy, ruled by hypocrisy.

All these lead up to Intermezzo for the Deceased, a brief breathing time preparing the second half of the album. It comes back with Atrocious Deed with Andy Ghost from Altar as guest. After many listens I feel that this second half of the album is much more aggressive. I was expecting a progressive side, but what we get is even more speed and fury.

Sadistic Enjoyment attests to this. Progressive elements are not absent, and we find them in the title track. Exhort to Obliterate is a 5-minute song, much more complex instrumentally, and the band experiments, in addition to bona fide thrash, with several other registers, such as small lapses into death metal or some groovy undertones, as in the beginning. 

The record ends with Denied Existence, an outro in the same pessimistic world view of the album’s lyrics: a world destroyed by an authoritarian and demagogical regime, countered by a voice of protest. We must mention here the artwork by Alex Boca, announcing the band’s extremely aggressive direction from the very start.

This is a good album, and I would recommend it especially to fans of the genre, but also to people who have the curiosity to follow a Romanian thrash metal band.

(+)

-aggression, speed, fulfilled promises

-the album has a thrash metal without getting side-tracked into other genres

(-)

-the vocals, sometimes

-6 songs are too few

Bogdan Drumea Nota: 8.5