DEICIDE — Scars of the Crucifix (review)

DEICIDE — Scars of the Crucifix album cover Album · 2004 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Scars of the Crucifix" is the seventh full-length studio album by US, Florida based death metal act Deicide. The album was released through Earache Records in February 2004. It would be the last album by the band to feature the classic lineup which consisted of the Hoffman brothers Eric and Brian on guitars, Glen Benton on bass/Vocals and Steve Asheim on drums. The Hoffman brothers left the band in November 2004 citing a number of different both personal and financial issues as the reasons.

The music on "Scars of the Crucifix" is in the trademark Deicide satanic/anti-Christian fast-paced death metal style. The album contains 9 tracks and features an only 29:32 minutes long playing time. Titles like "Mad at God", "Fuck Your God", "When Heaven Burns", and "Go Now Your Lord Is Dead" leave absolutely no doubt that Glen Benton´s contempt for Christianity hasn´t decreased with the years. If anything it burns even stronger than ever on this release. Unfortunately his lyric writing skills are not very developed and several times I cringe with embarrasment at his immature hateful outbursts. I have no problem with the messages, but they lyrics just sometimes read like they were written by a five-year old child. It´s probably an aquired taste but personally I would have liked to have seen some development of the lyrical themes over the years...but of course it wouldn´t really be Deicide now would it? The music is as usual really fast-paced and very brutal death metal delivered with great technical skills. The musicianship is tight and everything from the busy powerful drumming, the brutal guitar riffs and blistering solo work, to the rumbling bass and hateful brutal growling just work.

The sound production is professional, raw, and powerful, and while it´s not the best sounding production job on a Deicide album (nothing in their discography really compares to the first three albums, neither in terms of songwriting nor in terms of production values) it´s still a good quality production, suiting the material well.

Upon conclusion "Scars of the Crucifix" is a good quality death metal release by Deicide, but there´s nothing new here and they´ve already done these things much better on their early albums, so while this certainly isn´t a redundant release, and it´s arguably a step up in quality from "In Torment in Hell" (2001), the changes which happened within the band over the next couple of years were welcome at this point. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.
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