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Mental Horror: Proclaiming Vengeance Brutal Death Metal DeathVomit Records 2000
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Review
After hearing all the rage about this band, it was kind of saddening to finally hear the album Proclaiming Vengeance by brutal death metal act Mental Horror. The album had some good moments, but most of it was rather boring, and even out of place. Well, the album has a few instrumental tracks, and let's face it,only one of them is good, and there's three of them. So right there you have a few songs on here knocked out. Musically the album sounds pretty much the same on every song. There is really no variation. The drums just sound bad, mostly due to the production of the album, which isn't that great to begin with. The guitars are pretty good, but out of nowhere in the song you are greeted with a really good guitar solo, such as the one on "Genocidal Inquisition", but it's completely out of place. The only fast aspect of this release would be the drumming, and the solo completely clashes with it almost every time. The biggest issue of this release has got to be the recording. Granted it's from DeathVomit records, a smaller label that deals primarily on brutal death bands, but everything sounds muffled. And the vocals are a whole other story. The deep gutteral are audible but the vocalist just sounds bored as hell, and then the higher pitched vocals are actually lower then the gutteral in the mix! They even run an echo effect, which really doesn't need to be there outside of adding effect to the vocals. If you listen to the song "Black Spiritual Void", you can listerally sit there and listen to the drums and realize, outside of a few moments that last just as long as there are many, that he will change his drumming up. It's literally the same blast beats and double bass kicks over and over. And the next song, same thing. Same as the next. And, oh, wait a minute, is this "Black Spiritual Void" all over again? Aside the extremely repetative drum work, muffled guitars and bored vocals, the songs are extremely long, sometimes longer then they really have to be. Only two songs clock in under five minutes. "Burning Alive", which isn't that great a song, and "Screams Of Tiamat" which is a pretty impressive guitar solo. Other then the impressive fretwork on "Screams Of Tiamat" and the out of place solos throughout the CD (all of which have that somewhat irritating old school echo effect against a modern day production sound save the aforementioned track of course), there's only a handful of songs on here that are good. "Rising From Chaos" is actually a decent song amidst all the problems, and "Flagellum Forms" is pretty good thanks to the guitar work. "Tortured (Bleeding For The Plague)" seems to be the vocalist's favorite since he doesn't seem as bored as the previous songs, which actually makes the song sound good. All in all, it's just not really worth the time, as there's just too much wrong with this album. The band really needs to find a better place to record, or a better producer, and the drummer needs to find other blast beats to do. Hopefully they'll do that by the next album.
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