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Slugathor – Crypt Of The Ancient Fire

slugathor – crypt of the ancient fire

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Slugathor’s latest offering, ‘Crypt Of The Ancient Fire’ was already unleashed just before summer last year, but its vinyl issue only saw the light of day a month ago. So, whether we should still see it as a new release or not is debatable, but its appearance was a surprise nonetheless as the band was officially put to rest in 2010, not too long after the release of their ‘Echoes From Beneath’-album. But seemingly they have returned to haunt us with their old styled Death Metal.

That aforementioned last album, also released by Drakkar Productions, felt like an almost perfect last chapter to close the book of Slugathor. It was their best album to date, filled to its very brim with chugging, low to mid-tempo pummelling Death Metal of the most rudimentary kind. People who loved the band for that conservative view on the Death Metal genre of theirs can rest assured, not much has happened over the course of the past decade and a bit. It still plods on in those slow tempos, leans on those meaty riffs and has zero to none variation to offer.

It might be the changed zeitgeist, but even if Slugathor was never much of an adventurous band to begin with, ‘Crypt Of The Ancient Fire’ seems even more one-dimensional than ever before. While there are certainly some good riffs to be enjoyed on the album (especially in the last track, not counting the outro), most of the album sounds somewhat aimless, lacking in inspiration and basically just jaded.

While not necessarily really comparable, that other Finnish Old School Death Metal band in the slow-tempo territories, Desecresy, recently did pick up its groove and shook off its interchangeability. After a few albums their somewhat standard Death Metal got a shot of energy and with a great production they delivered their best work so far with ‘Unveil In The Abyss’ (Xtreem Music). Slugathor, on the other hand, seems to walk the opposite path, getting into rather bland and even dull territories with ‘Crypt Of The Ancient Fire’.

The band’s riffs feel like discarded Bolt Thrower riffs, it has that grooving DNA, but it lacks the necessary punchy energy – maybe a bit like Memoriam: close, but no cigar.

Slugathor

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