It has taken the legendary Dutch death metal band over 5 years to rise again from the slumber and appear with an epic new full length album. After a few major line-up changes, Pestilence came back with an impressive line-up. Pestilence has been out of the old school death metal they’ve produced back in the late ‘80’s but they certainly make some death metal so say the least.
The return of Pestilence exists in 13 songs. They all feature around the 3 and a half minute in length. The band has been through its career and that has certainly left his mark on the bands musical style. It is nothing like the Pestilence we know from ‘Malleus Malifercarum’ or ‘Spheres’. Pestilence doesn’t do the old school death metal stuff we know anymore but they have been making technical death metal with an old school death metal-ish vibe. During ‘Hadeon’ I’ve encountered a lot of different styles. The more technical style will appear in the second half of ‘Hadeon’. That is one thing that will be a little weird for me. The first 5 tracks are mostly old school death metal influenced modern day death metal with a little technical at some points. That is actually the side I really like. I’ve been coming back to those few songs over and over. However later in the album I realise that the other songs are really forgettable and don’t make such a great impact I was hoping for since Pestilence is known for making great songs.
During the second part of ‘Hadeon’ the album takes a really absurd change. The death metal riffs are getting a complied by weird spacy interludes and melodic riff’s. It doesn’t fit the style I remember Pestilence did. And even after giving the songs a few listens, I still couldn’t quite figure out how this would fit well in any part of the songs Pestilence makes. However, at some points during ‘Hadeon’, Pestilence produces one or two memorable riffs like during the song ‘Discarnate Entity’. But then the follow up song ‘Subvisions’ absolutely doesn’t make any sense at all. It doesn’t fit the style of the album and it absolutely doesn’t fit the pace of the album which is a real head scratcher. And don’t get me started about the horrible beep noise after the song ‘Ultra Demons’.
On the positive note, the best song of the album is weirdly enough in the ‘second’ part of the album. ‘Timeless’ is one of the shortest songs on the album however it makes the best impression on me. It is the most ‘bangable’ song on the record and that has really caught my attention.
Overall the album is good for the modern day death metal fan lover that is open for the progressive element that Pestilence has added to their music. For the older fans of Pestilence… Well.. They probably won’t come back to this album to listen to some Pestilence. And neither do I. The album sure does have its fair share of great moments but it does have its confusing parts which makes the album a 6.5 out 10.
Dutch Brutal/Death/Metal/Thrash NL