Deicide - Overtures of Blasphemy

Glen Benton, Steven Asheim, and the two current guitarists that make up Deicide have returned with another offering of Floridian death metal, the twelfth of the band’s long catalog. Deicide have never really made a creative approach to death metal or even notably strong writing chops their bread and butter of maintaining death metal notoriety, especially as of late. Rather, the band have relied on the vigor and energy they bring to the table on their performances, and the sacrilegious extent to which they can take their music. This has served them well on albums like The Stench of Redemption and even their old-school self-titled debut, where there is enough compositional variety to allow the band’s energy come though as vibrantly as they would like. But this heavy reliance on the intensity with which they spit their blasphemies shows itself to sometimes be a crutch too unsteady on monotonous albums like In the Minds of Evil and In Torment in Hell. The gap between the band’s best and worst releases is not that wide, however, and even on their more relatively bland releases, Deicide have proven themselves one of death metal’s most reliable figures, even if they’ve never really pushed the genre anywhere stylistically themselves or given the genre a surefire classic. And even though they arguable only gained notoriety by being a decent early participant in the exploding Florida death metal scene, there is nothing wrong with their being a band more intent on consistency than the avant-garde. There is something to be said of bands who can serve their genres by simply continuing to add to it, serving as bastion of stability or a reference point for where a genre has come from and a stronghold to reinforce its roots as its branches continue to expand.

With that in consideration, there really isn’t much that Overtures of Blasphemycan do without straying from Deicide’s established tradition. And it doesn’t. Deicide don’t seem to have any intention of breaking their religious adherence to anti-religious death metal, but like their fellow legendary Floridian neighbors, Cannibal Corpse, did on their most recent album last year, Deicide have kind of found that sweet spot of production that best compliments the straightforward style of death metal that has become so natural to them at this point. With this, all they really have to do is maintain a good stability on that one crutch, and they can pretty much just do what comes naturally, which they do. Overtures of Blasphemy finds itself on the positive side of the band’s narrow range of quality, but a positive addition it is nonetheless. The album does well to refrain from one consistent flaw within the band’s sound that has often crept in to prior releases to distasteful levels. No, not their swearing or their anti-Christianity, their clear imitation of Slayer (mainly of Kerry King’s soloing style) and of Cannibal Corpse. While it’s hard to not draw a death metal band’s influence to either of those two groups, Deicide has had a bad habit of making the prominence of that influence a distractor within their music. But here, they fortunately steer clear of that level of emulation and instead focus on what they themselves do well.

And Overtures of Blasphemy comes with some notable achievements for the band as well. “Crawled from the Shadows” features a surprisingly palpable melody within Benton’s growls, and “Defying the Sacred” finds the band incorporating some subtle gang vocals in a complimentary way. The rhythmic riff featured on “Destined to Blasphemy” also shows the band capable of some interesting compositional choices within their optimal style. The song “Flesh, Power, Dominion” does find them showing a bit of that Slayer influence again, but it’s not nearly as obnoxious as it has been at several points in their discography.

Overtures of Blasphemy is a rather predictable release for Deicide, but one made from a more optimistic prediction. The band do well to hone in on the aspects of their sound that make them prominent figures within the genre, maximizing the effectiveness of their production while also minimizing the presence of the types stumbles that have consistently marred their past efforts. It’s not changing the course of death metal or Deicide’s career by any means, but it is a welcome addition to and a professional exhibition of the genre’s natural potency through one of its most stalwart evangelists.