Wednesday, January 16, 2008

DECAPITATED: Nihility


Produced by Decapitated

Released: 2002

Some bands lead. Others follow. Decapitated showed fairly early that they certainly aren’t followers. While the style and execution of their unmitigated assault is clearly based on and influenced by death metal’s greats, this young Polish band realised that just churning out some carbon copy of Morbid Angel or Death simply wasn’t going to get them anywhere. That’s probably why, with Nihility they created what has to be one of the best albums of technical brutal death metal of all.

Very technical arrangements and sometimes oddly-placed guitar solos are very much a part of this band’s repertoire, and this alone put Decapitated several notches above the three-riffs-nine-different-ways, speed-is-all brigade. Indeed the album presents eight very different and original songs that aren’t afraid to step beyond established boundaries. During ‘Names’ they work in a stunning melodic passage that wouldn’t be out of place on an In Flames album, in ‘Spheres of Madness’ they almost step into a groove and elsewhere, and in ‘Babylon’s Pride’ and the remarkably techincal ‘Eternity Too Short’ they add short snatches of thrash, yet never do they allow it to compromise their solid crushing death metal attack.

Nihility also boasts a remarkably sharp production for a self-produced effort, and this was another facet that put Decapitated ahead of the crowd. With Nihility, Decapitated showed themselves to be among the ranks of bands like Nile who are constantly bringing new ideas and inspiration to the death metal genre. While it's true that the albums that followed weren't quite in the same league as this, particularly The Negation which was an abrupt disappointment, Decapitated was a remarkable band; it can only be hoped that they can somehow recover from the tragic loss of Vitek and come back with something incredible.



  1. Perfect Dehumanization (The Answer?)

  2. Eternity Too Short

  3. Mother War

  4. Nihility (Anti-Human Movement)

  5. Names

  6. Streets of Madness

  7. Babylon's Pride

  8. Symmetry of Zero

Rating: 92%


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