Deivos - Gospel of Maggots

DEIVOS - Gospel of Maggots (UNIQUE LEADER - CD 2010)

You may guess easily that I am not a huge fan of ultra technical death metal sounds and most bands of this sort are unlistenable for me; they’re just too complex and too noisy, without a real atmosphere and anything what I would really like in the metal music. I’m not gonna mention any names now, but really I can only abhor such music, as it makes me tired, rather than I would enjoy it. But for everything there are some exceptions, also for technical death metal and I can mention few names, whose music I really like. For instance Chaos Inception... For instance Nile... For instance Decrepit Birth… I mean bands, which together with their complex song structures, extremely difficult riffs, etc also bring a certain vision of this style and remember that the song must have some characteristics, which would make them memorable and enjoyable. Deivos was also that kind of band. I really liked their first album, “Emanation from Below”. It was extreme, fast and brutal death metal, but with many absolutely killer and very varied parts, so it wasn’t just a constant blast beat and guitar masturbation, but also many clear parts, many terrific ideas and great skills and performances of each of the instrumentalists. You could actually hear that the way the songs were built had a certain idea, the beginning, mid part and the end, not just a chaos and fuck knows what. So, when I was getting this second of Deivos’ CDs, “Gospel of Maggots”, I again had a hope that the band will carry on what were they doing before, but maybe in even better way.

Well, I’m after few spins of “Gospel of Maggots” and I must say that I liked the previous CD more. Deivos, I’m afraid, went in the direction, which I hoped they won’t – which is to play the technical death metal in exactly that way, which I am not so fond of. Definitely this second CD is more technical, faster and more complex that the debut and to be honest it doesn’t have so many highlights as “Emanation from Below”. For me it is rather typical technical death metal, where the most important values are to play fast, to have a very dense and tight rhythm section, wall of sounds and as many breaks, technical riffs and musical fireworks as it is possible to fit in these 32 minutes of music. They really do come close to death metal cacophony and even if I can say that Wizun is a damn beast behind his drumkit, then I cannot say that I really loved and felt 100% satisfied with the whole material, which Deivos has created here.

But from the other hand to despise the band just because they’re too technical and too modern would be a false, as there is still plenty of good music to obtain from “Gospel of Maggots”. I mean forgetting about the technical show off and general lack of real death metal atmosphere, there are some truly murderous parts and the best description for the whole music would simply be fuckin massive and extreme death metal. As I already said there are some truly stunning moments and such songs as “Trial of Bloodletting” or “Onward to Nothing” can really make your heart pound faster. I’m not gonna hide the fact that mostly I like the parts, when Deivos slows down to make their music more heavy and then varied, unfortunately there are not so many moments like that on “Gospel of Maggots”, which is sad, as I think it definitely would make the whole album sound more interesting. Anyway, it is pretty damn good. I am sure that those of you, who like more technical kind of death metal, will shit themselves in ecstasy once they listen to those sounds. Definitely Deivos proved that they’re first class band and one, whose ideas are far from just copying Suffocation. I do recommend “Gospel of Maggots”. This album has spoken to me also, even if I don’t usually listen to such music too much, but I do admire the composing skills of Deivos and all those details they put in their music, drums’ parts especially. It definitely is very impressive stuff. But I liked the previous CD more!

Standout tracks: they’re all pretty even, but my favourite is “Trial of Bloodletting”

Final rate: 75 / 100