Review by Ryan Harding

ANGEL CORPSE: EXTERMINATE Osmose Productions

The one review I saw of this album championed it as black metal, evidently because there's a misconception that anything which assaults with such relentlessness has to spring from the same origins as IMMORTAL or MARDUK (not to mention Osmose Productions is best known for their black metal line-up). Ironic, because this is obviously death metal; in fact ANGEL CORPSE is the one band where a MORBID ANGEL comparison is entirely accurate.

This Kansas City act rose from the ashes of ORDER FROM CHAOS. EXTERMINATE is their second full-length. And it is a fist in the face of the mid-paced practitioners of death metal.

EXTERMINATE opens with "Christhammer," a track which sets the pace for the onslaught to follow with its barrage of blast beats, fortified rhythms, in-and-out solos, and Pete Helmkamp's impressive vocal presence (more scathing than guttural). AC is guilty of MORBID ANGEL worship (witness the "Brainstorm" influence in "Christhammer" just to name one of several), but the difference is they don't just write riffs that owe their life to Trey Azagthoth so much as they do riffs that can compete with the master's.

"Wartorn" takes the torch next, blazing a trail to the skull-crushers "Into the Storm of Steel" and "Phallelujah."

The second half of EXTERMINATE rolls forward with an equal intensity, refusing anything even remotely resembling a cease-fire. ANGEL CORPSE also has an aversion to allowing their songs to end too quickly, supplying their works with thoughtful structures. This is brutal death which deserves rank among the hailed superiors CRYPTOPSY, SUFFOCATION, and NILE.

Five Perplex Skulls.

This review copyright 1998 E.C.McMullen Jr.

Return to Shadow Music