Nunslaughter - Angelic Dread

Published July 08 2014

*=Staff's pick	Angelic Dread Looking Into The Abyss Twisted Spirit* Crush The Guff Inner Beast The Lycanthrope Blood Drinker God Doomtown* Don't Mourn For Me Infested Coffins And Crosses* Three Nails, One Liar Death Beyond The Gallows One Bad Bitch

Genre	Death Metal	Don of the Dead	Vocals
Tracks	15	Zack Massacre	Guitar
Running time	36 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Hells Headbangers Records	Zack Massacre	Bass
Release	24 June 2014	Jim Sadist	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboard
Producer	Noah Buchanan
Similar artists	Possessed, Repulsion

Simplicity has always been the keyword to Nunslaughter's primitive death metal since their formation in 1987. On their mere fourth full-length 'Angelic Dread', Nunslaughter continues in familiar territory and delivers another slab of high quality straightforward death metal, or "devil metal" if the band will have their say in it, reeking of church defiant blasphemy. Bearing traits of Possessed, Repulsion, early Death and Venom you will find nothing groundbreaking on 'Angelic Dread', but again Nunslaughter has never been about expanding the boundaries of the genre. They simply play the death metal of old with conviction and does a damn fine job at it.

With their usual proneness for short and direct songs, only two of fifteen tracks get past the three minute mark, the tunes on 'Angelic Dread' has typically about two riffs only and about zero leads or fills on top of that. That basically leaves Nunslaughter to play around only with the riffs, vocal arrangements and the tempo for variation. The former in particular is the highlight of the album. Catchy, groovy and primitive with a thrash chug here, a tremolo pick there and a dirty punk vibe in the corner, this is the best set of riffs ever produced by the band in the full-length format. If the riffwork on 'Angelic Dread' does not induce instant headbanging, you are either paralyzed or constipated. The band probably realized this and consequently put the guitars nicely in the front of the mix.

As for the tempo, the first half of 'Angelic Dread' is executed at breakneck speed with a few mid-tempo and doomy passages thrown in to prevent excessive amounts of whiplash injured fans. On the latter half, the album moves in a more mid-tempo direction and is incidentally the more varied half where the album really takes off. The flaw of 'Angelic Dread' lies in the middle play-around-area, the vocal arrangements. Albeit Don of the Dead's barking growls with the occasional scream thrown in are as sacrilegious supreme as usual, the arrangements are rather unimaginative. The fancy use of Don's voice that lifted Nunslaughter's finest hour, or rather half an hour, 'Goat' is sparsely used on 'Angelic Dread'. Surprising no one, the incantations conjured from Don's throat is of the same as always no frills up-yours-God blasphemous humorous kind that Glen Benton wish he had written, funny stuff indeed.

To celebrate their first full-length in seven years a second disc of re-recorded songs from various 7" vinyls accompanies the album. More varied than the disc with new material, these songs fall slightly short in quality despite some gems. In general yours truly is an avid antagonist of re-recording old material, but in this case there actually is a valid point. Despite releasing only four full-lengths since 1987, Nunslaughter is widely known for their unbelievable stream of releases in other formats (23 live albums, 7 demos, 47 splits, 34 EPs, some singles and compilations and counting). Making some of the songs from this vast volume of releases available to the fans is a good deed and re-recording them creates a surprisingly good homogeneity. Those who already own all of Nunslaughter's offerings, of which there are five, will probably frown upon this, but the rest of us can rejoice.

Despite the splendid riff feast offered by the new material on 'Angelic Dread', the more varied 'Goat' remains Nunslaughter's magnus opus. Old fans will surely get the fix needed to fulfil their need for well-executed primitive blasphemous death metal, newcomers however are advised to check out the 2003 masterpiece before moving on to 'Angelic Dread'.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	5	7	7	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Tengan