Ferocity - The Sovereign

Ferocity

The Sovereign

by Lior "Steinmetal" Stein at 16 September 2013, 4:56 PM

And the rest is silence, but what came before that, and probably after it? Total War and complete obliteration. Past and future seems grim, no hope reserved for the dying but a bleak death, demise in total desperation. So who is the true sovereign yielding a destructive intent in his mind? For some reason I am certain that the Danish soldiers of Death Metal, the platoon of FEROCITY, have been immersing themselves in such apocalyptic ideas of what will come next, and what the black future holds after another great war that will embrace us all under its blackened cloak. Inflicted by both American and European Death Metal, assimilating the old school into a sickening modern form, FEROCITY introduces the chaotic brutality of SINISTER, ILLDISPOSED and SUFFOCATION along with chug grooves with a resemblance to HATESPHERE. Coming forth with another barrage of bombastic modern Death Metal devastation, FEROCITY hails with “The Sovereign”, via Deepsend Records, portraying a state of emergence and total depravity, seething the fires and rampaging mercilessly.

To be honest, “The Sovereign” is a skin piercer, a sharp stick right through the guts, yet I found to be no different or special that anything else in the contemporary Death Metal communion. When it comes to songwriting, the riff based tunes, largely, served their purpose with pieces of meaty riffery, occasionally demonstrating something above your average palm muted main riff, shifting basic old school Death Metal with few abusive end results of Deathcore. The assorted drumming actually made some difference, along with a fine lead guitar work and crude bass fretwork, and of course the lead vocal section producing guttural preaching of insane violence, degeneracy and extreme apprehensions. It appeared to be quite common, yet as I mentioned Nikolaj Kjaergaard ripping the skins with vigorous force, showed his worth while Allan Poulsen, other than conveying a series of rhythm riffs that appeared banal at times, though some of them made me bang my head, revealed his amazing guitaring skills with a line of fine melodic licks and well written soloing demonstrations. Poulsen merely upgraded his band’s efforts, thus lifting up this album from total mediocrity. Frankly, I found more comfort, if you can all it that, within the melodic channels that shed some light and further interest in the band’s creations. As much as I am a fan of riffs, especially the heavy and meaty kind of chugs in Death Metal crossed with bits of Thrash, within “The Sovereign” there is a fair share of those that keeps repeating, as if I already heard them countless of times before, especially along with Kasper Wendelboe’s singing, aren’t that thrilling.

Sure that there are the impressive intensities of “Human Game”, “No Rest for the Wicked” and I might even add “Chain of Command”, which show that there is a potential for the manifestation of an intriguing form of Death Metal form, but I came to notice that there are fillers, or plain bleak tracks that even with their robustness are far from convincing. No doubt that FEROCITY haven’t been trying to reshape Death Metal, yet on the other hand, they turned out to be just one of a longer line with a kick ass production with modern values, proficient playing skills, yet with soggy material.