Initial Impressions: Decrepit Birth: Polarity

I won this album in a contest. My fiancee unknowingly won a copy too as I used her email address to enter the contest as well, so she's not entirely sure what to do with hers. The contest was on Metalsucks and was one of their Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week contests where they present a very difficult-to-read logo of a relatively-unknown band and give out a prize for guessing correctly. In case you're wondering, the band is Vertical Section Dismemberment of Sexual Crotch.

Technical death metal is one of the harder genres for me to review. It's a difficult genre to get into as the music is often technical to the point of losing emotion and soul. Nevertheless, there are bands out there that have the ability to focus on technicality, but still write coherent music. Decrepit Birth is one of these bands.

Decrepit Birth sounds like a death metal band playing symphonic music. The music is very technical, but it sounds clearly classically-influenced. There is a lot of soul involved in the music. The guitar leads soar throughout the album and provide most of the melodies. The rumbling bass and blasting drums keep things in check.

The vocals are probably the weakest point on the album. With as much going on musically, one would probably prefer more than a one-note growler. The vocals seem almost superfluous at times. Here's an idea: instrumental technical death metal. It's been done before and this band could easily pull it off. However, the band's lyrics are surprisingly good and border on the mystical, so perhaps just doing more with the vocals is the answer. I don't know.

I like this album even more than Decrepit Birth's previous album, which I enjoyed quite a bit. The band has really captured a unique sound here. It's brutal, yet melodic, and very intense.