Vehemency
If we were to categorize countries to specific metal genres, I would put Mexico to death metal without a moment’s hesitation. That promising and blossoming has been the country’s output for a long time already, and Omision’s In the Shadow of the Cross is another addition to Mexico’s long list of old school death metal albums.
And while it doesn’t offer anything new and truly exciting (no surprise there), Omision’s debut effort is among the better albums in the field of 90s death metal, luckily not only dwelling in the Swedish inlfuences, but more prominently in suchs bands as Deicide and Incantation. The theme of anti-Christiany is fittingly carried through these savage compositions that relent only on the acoustic outro ”For Those Far Away”. Before that the listener faces ten tracks of morbid death executed with down-tuned riffs, grunted vocals and great drumwork.
The production deserves a mention here too, as it successfully evokes an atmosphere of utter darkness and evil without any overcompression. The sound is very natural and perhaps slightly low-fi for someone’s ears. The best moments of the album reside in the string of two tracks, ”Assault in the Vatican” and ”Beyond the Burning Gates”, of which the former convinces with its slow menace and the latter with its with pummelling drums and overall kick-ass riffage.
What comes to memorable compositions, after the two aforementioned songs there’s a slight downhill. As a supporter of short albums, I would have probably omitted a track or two from this whole, but I am not bored at any point anyways. Those more deeply into all kinds of old school death metal will find even more to enjoy from In the Shadow of the Cross, of that I’m sure. Do not touch this one if you’re only into the most modern and fastest extreme metals out there.