LP Review: "Trance of Death" by Venenum

Trance of Death

Recently it became increasingly obvious to me that I was not nearly well versed in Pink Floyd. Certainly, we all know the big ones, but how many "fans" know their earlier, more off the wall works?

Well, that's a big part of this, off the record, journey with Pink Floyd. They have a long and winding catalog that needs to be fully explored.

Those crazy chaps from England have something on the entire rest of the world. They never stopped and never stood still. Every single one of their albums sounds wholly different than what came before it.

In order to be able to do that, the band must have a wider array of paints from which to choose. Look at Metallica? It wasn't until Cliff Burton was in the band that they were able to jump forward, but even then, the loss of Mustaine and the gain of Burton kind of canceled each other out. It wasn't until their fourth album that they really began growing wings.

Venenum

Germany's Venenenum have come out of the gate with their colors in place.

(We'll kind of ignore the five year gap between their MLP debut and the current LP release.)

By and large, Death Metal has lacked a progressive bent over the course of its existence. Take away Obituary and the founding fathers were decidedly unprogressive.

Venenum has no issues following the songs to their conclusions regardless of where they go.

Many of the riffs on this record start off in the well worn category only to be tied up at the end with something wholly unexpected. Instead of using simple acoustic guitars to as intros and melodic interludes, Venenum brings in cellos.

There's seemingly a never ending palette of colors Venenum has at their disposal. They're also fully willing to push the boundaries of death metal. Really it's more appropriate to say they are pulling them as they have largely eschewed well served death metal conventions.

It's something old and something new combined. Why, there are times when it even gets a little blue.

Release: 3/17/17
Genre: Death Metal
Label: The Anja Offensive (North America)
Formats: CD/LP/Digital
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