UMUR Dying to Live is the 3rd full-length studio album by Danish thrash metal act Invocator. The album was released in 1995 by Progress Records. The lineup that recorded Weave the Apocalypse (1993) is nearly intact. Bassist Per Jakobsen has been replaced by Carsten Mikkelsen though. So once again we´re treated to the technical and adventurous drumming by Per M. Jensen ( The Haunted), the intricate bass playing by Carsten Mikkelsen ( who enters the lineup with style) and the impressive technical guitar riffing by Jacob Hansen and Perle Hansen. The latter plays some excellent solos on this album. Shredding at times yet melodic and memorable. Just the way I like it.

The music on the album is technical thrash metal. Since Weave the Apocalypse the band have incorporated a lot more groove into their sound but the music is still unmistakably the sound of Invocator. Jacob Hansen´s "love him or hate him" vocals are still an aquired taste and if I have to point out a minor weakness on the album I would mention the vocals. When they are best I think they work really well, but at times they are a bit monotone IMO and lack a bit of power. As mentioned that´s a minor flaw though and other than that Dying to Live is a nearly perfect technical thrash metal album. The above mentioned excellent musicianship is a great asset, but the songwriting is also on a high level. The songs are mostly mid-paced and the incorporated groove means that most songs are more accessible than most of the band´s earlier material. Dying to Live very much feels like the natural successor to Weave the Apocalypse.

The production is sharp and powerful. It´s the kind of sound that brings out the best in the music.

Dying to Live is a great technical thrash metal album by Invocator and definitely one of the best thrash metal releases to come out of Denmark in the nineties. Invocator never really got the attention they deserved IMO and sadly this incarnation of the band split-up in the years after the release of Dying to Live. A 4 star rating is fully deserved.

Time Signature King in a world of metal...

Genre: tech/prog groove thrash metal

The first track I heard from this album was "Hole", which the band performed at a concert back in the day while still promoting "Weave the Apocalypse" (Invocator warmed up for Paradise Lost in Odense back in the 1990s, and we ended walking out on Paradise Lost, because they just seemed so uninspired adn boring compared to Invocator; now I'm of course a big fan of Paradise lost, too, but I still think that having a super proficient and energetic technical thrash metal band warm up for a gothic doom metal band is not the best combination in the world).

"Dying to Live" is an example of how well you can make it work if you - provided that you're Jaboc Hansen of course ;-) - blend the groovy brutality of Pantera with the technicality of Dream Theater, Fates Warning and Psychotic Waltz. The musical style on this album is quite unique without trying to hide its influences. Gone are the extreme thrash metal features that characterized "Excursion Demise" apart from tritonal patterns here and there, but the brutality remains. The music is simultaneously groovy and complex and, to be sure, cannot be replicated by anyone else.

"Dying to Live" is recommendable to any metal fan, and one of the best releases within the era of early modern metal - displaying both finesse and groove.