Requiem
Within Darkened Disorder

Swiss band Requiem can probably be said to be something of a veteran band in the traditional death metal genre, this band was founded way back in 1997 and have released six albums to date. This album is their sixth remastered and rereleased partly due to generating interest for a new album by them but also due to commercial difficulties for the previous label when they released the album which could mean that they might not have gotten the promotional work they needed, I know we never noticed that album. But now we and all who missed this album the first time around will have another shot at it.

Traditional death metal it is we are dealing with here, no fancy tricks just plain and simple death metal of the older school. They stay true to the format at all times, a format not too easy to vary and these guys do not really look to do so it seems. They do what they do well, the production is excellent and probably among the best I have heard in the genre. The songs are brutal, heavy, aggressive and powerful, the vocals are typical of the genre. No surprise when it comes to the musical ways of these guys, one thing that might be complained about is that it is not particularly varied and that the album with its 45 minutes is a bit on the long side.

I would say that overall this is a good album, not spectacular but it has its highlights. The third track Purified in Flames is a good one with a nice melody going and I also like the opening track I am Legion, these are two highlights of this album. The other tracks are quite good as well but the album as a whole is lacking a bit in variation which might be a bit of a problem at times. When I listened to it latest I had a tough time keeping awake in the latter half of the album which weighted over to the lower of the scores I was considering for this album. I think the long playing time paired with a slight lack of variation makes the album suffer slightly.

This is a great traditional death metal album for the fan of the genre but I doubt that it would appeal too much to others, to me it was a slight feeling of déjà vu when listening to the album. I think they should have dared a bit more perhaps or something like that because in the end it feels like we had to good tracks and then a load of decent but not overly interesting ones, and I do think this album would have been better had they removed one or two of the tracks on the latter half of the album. In the end this ends up being a fairly good traditional death metal album but probably nothing that will go down in history. Clearly something for the death metal fanatic to take a close look at.

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