Drawn and Quartered’s Extermination Revelry is like a blast of fresh air in the over-crowded, over-brutal death metal genre. Rather than detonating in your face with a payload of blastbeats, this album unfurls itself riff by riff into a masterful creation of dark, unforgiving songwriting. Taking tons of influences from stalwarts such as Incantation and Immolation, these fiends demonstrate to the world that top class death metal need not have riffs that rush by in a zillion miles per hour.
Every song has been crafted into a separate entity with none of the inter-changeable kind of riffing to be found in many of the "modern" death metal bands, and the wonderful deep throated growls put a stamp of "True Evil" all over the music. Not only has this album made into my top 10 list of 2003, but I'm very sure if I were to compile a list of the best 10 songs of 2003, the disk’s second song, "Incinerated Faithful," would sit right at the top. This is an essential, essential release for any death metal fan.
(p.s: A few more solos like the one in "Incinerated Faithful" would have won these guys a full 10/10. Lets hope that's what they deliver next time.) (9.5/10)
This second full length album of "the Northwest's medieval torturers" is said to surely please fans of acts like Nile, Morbid Angel and the infamous Cannibal Corpse. While that is true to some (very little) extent, I wouldn't recommend Extermination Revelry to anyone who likes Nile, as that's a completely different breed of death metal.
Drawn and Quartered is a nice blend between the other two bands, though. This group is one of those that you either like or just feel indifferent to. Their music is of a brand that has been done to death but is never so rotten to completely disapprove of.
Found on this disc are nine more than adequate tracks (10 if you have a US copy, which contains a special US only bonus track) sporting a very old-school death metal sound, which, granted, will please fans of the aforementioned bands, but it differs just enough to raise (or bang if you will) a few heads. A fluent mix of excellently executed solos, non-stop riffing, double bass antics and low grunts... you've heard it all before.
And it's no shame if you have, because this is a decent enough trip back to the old days of death metal – the very old school sound and song writing actually sounds quite refreshing, with each song played by the Drawn and Quartered boys bringing enough to the table to make this album well worth your money.
So all you guys who have a nostalgic crave go ahead and buy this album, you will definitely like it. Those looking for more modern sounding death metal, go hunt down the new Insision or Gorgasm. (6.5/10)
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