Assimilation - Tainting the Purity (2020)

 

Cost: $2.00

I feel bad about not liking this more, because strictly as a bargain bin find, it's fantastic, but based on my own expectations, I was a little disappointed. The Evil Invaders shirt on the back and the Disciples of Power t-shirt (never seen one before, even on the band themselves!) in the booklet as well as seeing them called a "death/thrash" band online made me anticipate wonderful things.

Rather than the late '80s death/thrash I was hoping for, this venerates early '90s death metal. While there are thrash influences in the music, I don't think there's enough to warrant it as part of their genre descriptor in any way (at least for this album). After listening to the album, I was somewhat shocked to see that no reviews I could find mentioned Morbid Angel. There are certainly other bands that take more direct inspiration from MA, but at times this definitely has that swarming MA feel. The very lead guitar-forward feel of the music and some of the vocal cadences also immediately brought Morbid Angel to mind. There are of course other influences, but I hear those to a lesser degree. There are some tastefully shreddy leads and solos, and the guitarwork reminded me a bit of the Suffocation EP and debut in that the guitarwork is quite proficient on a technical level, but the songs themselves are more traditional and not technical death metal. There's even some early Cannibal Corpse in their sound too.

The King Diamond cover is fine, although they bury the falsetto backing vocals way in the background. I read that the band wanted to do something other than a death metal cover, which is great, but "Welcome Home" seems so cliche. Especially with the decent guitarwork, it would have been cooler to hear a deep cut off Fatal Portrait or even one of the faster-paced Mercyful Fate songs.

So yeah, unfortunately maybe I just don't find their songwriting that interesting, because there's nothing I can really point out as a particular misstep here, especially considering they draw major influences from an era of death metal that, while not quite my favorite, I still actively enjoy very much. The CD is good but falls short of being great for me. But again, to find something like this in the cheapo bin is amazing.