Let’s begin with a quote, often attributed to the great Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results“. In musical terms, this can relate to a few things. Finding a formula that works and driving it into the ground so that even longtime fans are sick of it is one seen to occur often. Another version, however, is persisting with an idea that wasn’t even that good in the first place, hoping it elicits a reaction every so often like that clip of Peter Griffin holding his knee. Anyway, in totally unrelated news, DEICIDE have a new album out.
This is the 13th full length album by Glen Benton and his gang of religion-hating lads. For those of you who don’t know, DEICIDE are essentially the band that your mum/grandmother used to be terrified of in the early 90s. Chock full of anti-religious imagery and lyrics, they admittedly did put out about an hour’s worth of decent death metal before the schtick began to get a little stale. There’s really only so many ways you can say “yeah, fuck Jesus, that guy is lame” until it begins to grate on you. Now, that isn’t saying that it isn’t a viable source of lyrical inspiration for death metal, Benton himself made one of the greatest anti-Christian albums of all time, but with VITAL REMAINS, not DEICIDE… and he would have been better served letting that record be his legacy. As it is, his reputation is that of that guy at the party who just won’t leave, only marginally above Chris Barnes in the credibility stakes. Say one thing for Benton however, he makes the former CANNIBAL CORPSE vocalist seem artistically relevant by comparison.
For this record, Banished By Sin, the band decided to make a statement by committing surely the most evil, offensive and despicable act of their career by far: having an utterly shit album cover generated by artificial intelligence. Lacking any sort of real edge or danger, it reeks of laziness, looking more like a badly designed t-shirt you’d buy as a teenager from a stall in Benidorm than a classic piece of death metal art. If the band are going to use A.I to make the album art, how do we know they haven’t used it to write the record? We don’t, to be honest.
If you’ve heard half of a DEICIDE track ever in your life, then you know what this sounds like. Benton grunts and shouts his way over some death metal backing that is the definition of “yeah, that’ll do“. It isn’t so much meat and potatoes as it is roadkill and balls of dirt. There’s more edge on a tennis ball than in the production. His voice has aged well though, you can give him that. He certainly doesn’t sound like a certain death metal frontman/Twitter block machine. Sadly, he doesn’t seem to want to stretch himself or do anything that he hasn’t done dozens of times before. There are the odd moments of groove or memorability, but they fade quicker than a rub on devil tattoo.
Lyrically, you know what’s coming. Benton isn’t someone known for his deep metaphors or vague lyrics. At times it reads like a 13-year-old’s diary after his parents make him go to Sunday School instead of letting him play on Fortnite. It’s absolutely staggering that in 2024, one of the tracks (Sever Your Tongue) contains the line “fuck your religion” – something that would have felt more than a little cringey 30 years ago. You start to wonder if the record was created in the same way as the artwork. Just prompts of “God suckz lol” into a generator and press go. It’s like a record company shareholder’s idea of what death metal is. You also find yourself thinking back to the A.I cover and wondering how many of these lyrics were scraped from a Chatbot with prompts typed one handed while Benton scrolls through Reddit Atheism threads with the other.
At this point, the death metal genre has left DEICIDE behind. There’s bands making much better shock value music that actually sounds good (SANGUISUGABOGG) and bands taking instrumental risks (TOMB MOLD and HORRENDOUS to name but two). Glen Benton is a relic, an embarrassing figure of the genre’s past that for some reason, refuses to just go away. We get it Benton, Christianity sucks, but we’d rather spend a few hours at Mass than listen to anything DEICIDE has released post 1994. Mind you, it’s better than having to listen to SIX FEET UNDER, so every cloud, eh?
Rating: 3/10
Banished By Sin is set for release on April 26th via Reigning Phoenix Music.
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