UMUR "The Fine Art of Murder" is the 6th full-length studio album by US death metal act Malevolent Creation. The album was released through Pavement Music in october 1998. Compared to "In Cold Blood (1997)" only guitarist/main composer Phil Fasciana is left in the lineup. Bassist/lead vocalist Jason Blachowicz (who left to concentrate on his tatoo artist career, later founded Divine Empire and even later returned to Malevolent Creation) has been replaced by Gordon Simms on bass and the returning original vocalist Brett Hoffmann. Both new drummer Dave Culross and new guitarist Rob Barrett have also previously played with Malevolent Creation.

The music is aggressive death metal with thrash metal leanings. The material on the album is pretty much Malevolent Creatin by the numbers. Only "The Fine Art of Murder", which includes keyboards, and "Day of Lamentation", which is a rather unconventional track featuring acoustic guitar sections with growling on top, deviate a bit from the rest of the tracks. As always the band are tight and aggressive, and while Jason Blachowicz was a decent vocalist, Malevolent Creation don´t really sound like themselves without Hoffmann, who is one of the most distinct sounding growling vocalists on the scene. Here he delivers a deeper and even more aggressive growling vocal attack than ever before. As such the material on the album is decent, but my overall impression of the album is a bit negative because of the powerless sound production. Especially the drum sound isn´t that successful to my ears.

...so upon conclusion I´d say "The Fine Art of Murder" is one of the more standard quality releases by Malevolent Creation. Just like it´s predecessor was. It´s not bad by any means and there are certainly enough brutal energy and great playing on the album to secure a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating, but to be honest I´d rather spend time with one of their "classics" from the early nineties.