review by: Abhishek Chatterjee

Grave are back after six long years. The world surely hasn’t been waiting with baited breath to hear from them again, not after the disgrace Hating Life was. And even though it starts off in fine fashion with the skull pounding “Rise” and hauntingly beautiful chorus part to “Behold the Flames,” this album should be renamed to Still Trying to Crawl out of the Grave We Dug for Ourselves. That’s because apart from the two above mentioned songs, this is insipid material that brings one thought to my mind over and over again: “hey, I’ve heard this riff before!”

Staying in the slow to medium slow range most of the time does not help their cause, either. “Dead is Better” hovers just under the “decent” mark. The rest of the songs bore me. Maybe I am being too harsh but let’s face it, this does not come near previous classics like Into the Grave and You’ll Never See. Those are the two albums any Grave material is going to be compared with. (5/10)