Lifeless / Obscure Infinity / Arroganz / Reckless Manslaughter - Sermon of Ungodly Dreams

LIFELESS / OBSCURE INFINITY / ARROGANZ / RECKLESS MANSLAUGHTER - Sermon of Ungodly Dreams (SUPREME CHAOS Records - 12"LP 2015)

I keep saying how impressed I am with the current death metal scene in Germany and all those killer old school bands that emerged there. And this release is kind of proof for it, even though it doesn’t feature two of my favourite bands from Deutschland (Revel in Flesh and Slaughterday). Damn, if they were featured here also, then this split would be greatest than everything else. Anyway, the line up is solid also: two bands, which I also like a lot – Lifeless and Obscure Infinity and two, which I only knew by the name – Arroganz and Reckless Manslaughter. The LP was released by Supreme Chaos Records and I must say that this label did amazing job here; I love the artwork, and the packaging is very solid, with insert sheet and double sided poster. More so, there are three coloured versions, of which I have the red/black marbled vinyl limited to 250 copies. And musically, this is just killer feast and great stuff from start to finish.

So, we start with Arroganz. They already have three albums released, last one “Tod & Teufel” was unleashed by FDA in 2015… but this is my first opportunity to listen to their music. And I like it a lot. It’s more like blackened death metal, not so pure, traditional style of death metal I think, but that’s not so important. What matters is that this is truly solid, great sounding stuff, with quite harsh and aggressive manner. It’s also quite slow, with really dark and gloomy atmosphere and generally really fine song. After hearing it I definitely have to check “Tod & Teufel” also.

Lifeless strikes with “Insanity Reigns”. I like their “Godcontruct” album a lot, it’s killer Dismember-like death metal, insanely good debut. And this new song doesn’t disappoint. I like that the band tries to come up with a bit different kind of riffs here and there, but generally sticks to what I liked on the debut album. This new song should not disappoint anyone, who worships Swedish death metal, it delivers great, crushing riffs, some nice melodies and great vocals of Marc Niederhagemann. It’s just powerful death metal, really good sounding, and for me this is the stuff I like the most.

Side B starts with Obscure Infinity and obviously their song along with Lifeless track is my favourite part of the split. I have all their previous releases, I like to observe how their music progresses and gets better and better. “Ashen Embalmment” is another truly fine song from them. It sounds awesome and again I have to say their music is on one hand deeply rooted in the traditional European death metal of early 90’s, but on the other have enough individual and original patterns to distinguish Obscure Infinity from the rest of old school death metal scene. This band is just special, sadly I feel they’re still not quite as appreciated as they should... but they’re going in the right direction. “Ashen Embalmment” is one of their better songs for sure, great riffs, some of which are slightly melodic (great leads!), killer dark atmosphere… maybe the dual vocals are not sounding quite as awesome as I would wish, but I am not bothered. It’s very, very good song anyway.

Reckless Manslaughter is left on the battlefield as last, to kill all what’s left alive… and maybe they’re last and I like their song least from the whole set, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad! What I don’t like about it is that it’s just too long and a bit monotonous, even if the main, opening theme is really cool. But it gets quite repetitive, so I would cut the last two minutes and maybe then it would be a bit better and we would get a nice heavy, bit mournful death metal played in slow pace. Don’t get me wrong though, I like it as it is, it’s enough to convince to get some of their CDs, maybe one day I will.

Final rate: 80/100