Killer of Gods: Mental Retardation Force (2016)

I am going to start by saying I absolutely do not approve of the album's title, or some of the lyrics.  There is some highly objectionable lyrics in this release.  I am not going to spend a lot of time discussing those matters for obvious reasons.  Now, with that out of the way, on to the release.

Indonesia actually has a fairly vibrant metal scene.  Metal Archives lists almost 1,800 bands from the country.  And there are generally a variety of styles, focusing mainly on the more extreme subgenres.  Killer of Gods is the first Indonesian metal band I have heard, personally.  But there will be another one very soon.

Killer of Gods is a technical death metal band whose sound is rooted in the old school technical death metal bands like Atheist and Pestilence rather than the more modern take.  That is to say that the sound does not lose any musicality in exchange for showing off their technical proficiency.  And thus the songs here are complete songs, rather than a collection of parts dominated by noodling riffs and pounding drums.  The band is at their best when they are expanding beyond simply death metal, incorporating jazzy interludes or acoustic melodies.  Unfortunately, this happens infrequently, though the ending to "The Power of the Moon" and the final instrumental track are a solid four minutes or so of the best this band has to offer.

Killer of Gods does not really stand out much from the pack of technical death metal bands, other than their country of origin.  The album is decent enough, but there are some significant lyrical issues that I have that I will not delve into.  They have talent certainly, but songwriting could use a little work yet.