Ophiolatry - Transmutation

\r\nOphiolatry is a Brazilian satanic death metal band formed in 1998 although "Transmutation" is only their second full length album on Force of Satan Records/Regain records. \r\n

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\r\nAs I said above, they are into the satanic death metal with a union between the imagery from early (of course) Deicide and the large quantity of Krisiun speed. I should even mention that the lead vocalist, Antonio Cozta has a pentagram tattoo on his forehead. So don’t expect nothing less here than total blasphemy and over the top brutality with a sawing fast yet solid riffage and insane drumming with an endless, supernatural barrage of blastbeats and an unrelenting, violent sound and of course nothing else than deformed, roared vocals. Of course all this upfront ultra savagery gives you the rational impression that all the songs are pretty much similar structured and the truth is that there aren’t many changes within the compositions although their duration is very short yet this excessive velocity in addition with the interesting guitar work is rather holding the attention of the listener and evoking an arousing feeling around the overall audible output. An exception is the track "Urutu", a really weird composition, the track "Variacoes 1" something between jazz and dodecaphony, as well as the last track "Preludio No. 4", a calm and wistful song with an acoustic guitar, which stands in complete contrast against the rest of the music. \r\n

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\r\nThe negative things on this release however are firstly that the songs sound way too influenced and unoriginal plus the fact that they also have this overproduced and polished effect especially with the drum section. But I guess as far as the first thing I believe it is rather ridiculous in nowadays to ask for originality anymore and as far as the latter it depends clearly on what opinion each one of us has about the production issue. Personally I found them interesting and enjoyable. \r\n

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\r\nVaso "Glen Benton" Prassa \r\n

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