Decrepit Birth - Diminishing Between Worlds
April 30 2008 at 04:41:07 AM
Having delivered as perfect a transliteration of the Big Bang as we’re ever likely to hear on 2003’s
…And Time Begins, Santa Cruz, California’s Decrepit Birth returns to create some order out of chaos.
After withstanding a barrage of professional setbacks and personal tragedy over the last few years, first in bassist Derek Boyer leaving to join Suffocation, and again in 2006 after live guitarist Mike Turner was imprisoned on charges of child molestation - Decrepit Birth’s founder/guitarist/songwriter Matt Sotelo has steered the band in an entirely new direction, abandoning the non-stop brutality of
…And Time Begins for more defined melodies, varied arrangements and longer compositions modeled exclusively on the later Death albums,
Symbolic and
The Sound of Perseverance (to the point where Sotelo is almost
completing Schuldiner’s work). Creating a more emotional record compared to their first, but also falling into many too familiar trappings.
What makes
Diminishing Between Worlds initially so outstanding eventually becomes its main hindrance, that being Sotelo’s obvious bid to strike out amongst the more recognized performers in the genre. There are practically as many leads as there are lyrics crammed into the first four tracks of the album, all in the Schuldiner mold, which sounds impressive at first, but as they occur so often these gradually begin to take attention away from the whole, and in the process devalue themselves. Although things mellow slightly during the album’s second half – so much that I wonder if the first set of songs wasn’t written months before or after the others – The fact that it deals in such unnecessary filler often makes the album feel much longer than it actually is. While a re-recording of “And Time Begins,” merely sounds out of place alongside the new material, “The Enigmatic Form,” with its dry, Cynic-inspired fusion is primarily set up as a way for Sotelo and the rest of the band (gathered from members of the equally showy Odious Mortem) to prove their chops, a kind of technical Death Metal admissions exam that otherwise adds nothing to the album or the song it’s pinned onto.
While such missteps are at least answered by some of the band’s most impressive tracks to date (“Dimensions Intertwine,” “Through Alchemy Bound Eternal”), they also make clear that Decrepit Birth have yet to strike the right balance through this latest transition. Sadly, despite the obvious skill on display, the band is too willing to use their talents to uphold conventions rather than tear them down.
[Todd DePalma]
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