Rex Shachath
Revocation Of The Blood Elect

Northern Irish death metallers of Rex Shachath probably tick every box of stereotypes of the traditional death metal there is for a band in this genre. They have a press photo in the Hitler perspective, they have words of massacres and fucking someone up, even directed at the listener. Then of course the death metal guitar lines that are present in every traditional death metal song ever written (maybe a slight exaggeration but you get my point), the silly unreadable logo that looks like it was designed by a three-year-old on crack and the cover that conveys some sort of lethal message drawn by some person with a dark mind. And the obvious guttural growl that starts the opening song, well after a spoken word thing about fucking and massacring – sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

It is the band’s second EP and it contains five tracks that are actually just variation on one track but with different names and lyrics, very similar songs through the EP. It is traditional death metal true to form with no fresh ideas and I would say that it sounds just about exactly as my stereotype of this genre – a genre I don’t think that highly of. I would grant them that the production sounds very solid and the sound is very powerful, but I still highly doubt that many of us will be particularly impressed with what we get on this album. And how hard can it really be to have some variation with only five tracks, it doesn’t require that much effort but they still don’t really put it in there and I have time to grow tired of this EP despite the short playing time.

It is difficult to muster any kind of enthusiasm for this EP, I have heard it all before so many times already, it is like watching the same movie over and over again, and you know every aspect of it sooner or later. And it is not as though they make it especially good, rather makes me want to push the ESP off button so the stereo is especially off rather than playing it any more. But sure, it is okay, not bad in any way and I don’t doubt that many fans of traditional death metal will find this fairly enjoyable as those guys fear novelty and likes when the new stuff sounds exactly like everything else.

I think that they do what they do well, too bad that what they do was dated and mostly uninteresting fifteen years ago. My question is why? Why write variation of someone else’s music instead of creating one’s own? That is a very good question and I doubt these guys know the answer that probably is the same as the reason for intolerance and other bad things in our world: the fear of change, people are afraid when things aren’t what they used to be. That is what makes most music today boring and that is why I say no thank you to this album.

HHHHHHH