I had high hopes for this.  It was either because it was named after an Entombed song from Clandestine, or that drummer Eric Krebs is the drummer here, and he is in another German death metal band called Golem, who released one of the early 00s most underrated death metal albums, Dreamweaver. Unfortunately, I was let down on both counts as Absolution is a pretty standard, even bland modern death metal record.

There’s nothing wrong with Absolved . It stands astride blustery modern technical death metal (Suffocation comes to mind) and beefy European melodic death metal with a punchy modern production and the veteran members, all from other German acts, all deliver a solid performance.  However, when it all comes together the songs just never really stand out or deliver anything that stands out at all.

The technicality and brutal efficiency is typically German, vocalist Jan Geidner has a solid  Frank Mullen meets Mark Grewe-ish growl, and Grebs is a monster on drums, but I’ll be damned if I can’t recollect a single riff from the record. Nothing that makes me hit replay or even pick out  for this review. And I really tried.

So when I say the fervent blasting in “Behind the Veil” is tightly delivered or tumbling Suffocation-ish cadence of “Dawn of Infinity” is nicely savage, or penultimate “Obedience” is brutally polished, I’m really stretching to find something that stands out amid the blandly brutal (brutally bland?) by the numbers modern death metal. I really kept hoping for something, anything to just grab me, and boy the final track “Jesus’s Delusion Army”, came sooooo close. But ultimately Absolution is a forgetful, if well played album that wont register on 2019s slew of death metal releases.

[Visit the band's website]

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