Find the coverage and some great photos of this year's Devilstone Open Air written by our Lithuanian contributor Inga here>> www
Death metal is such a limitless genre. You can do whatever you'd like. It can be over the top technical or slow. Brutal or insane and it's all so good. When we made "Visions of Death" it just came out with a natural old school-ish vibe and that's great, but our newer material has a much more modern technical vibe. I love how death metal has evolved.
For me, death metal should be heavy as fuck, brutal (which doesn't necessarily mean "fast"), atmospheric and evil. If the "evil" thing is not there, you can't label yourself death metal, that's a fact. I'm so fucking close minded when it comes to metal music... I listen to the SAME hard rock, heavy, thrash, doom, death and black metal that I used to listen to 15 years ago.
Dutch death metal act Vermin have been around since 2002 and self-produced two little releases in the years prior to "A Nihilistic Swarm". First thing to notice is that the production has improved drastically compared to their previous efforts, but the balancing needs to better in equal measure. The guitar sound is so overbearingly thick that it is leaving virtually no room or space for the classic deep rumbling bass to flow through. The drum sound is equally as domineering, with snare drums hammering everything in relentless frenzy - cymbals are hardly audible through out at any point. Bass drums thump their way almost as heavy as the snare drums, to the point that they sometimes become interchangeable with each other. Vocalist Thomas has a mean and menacing grunt with some cool vocal lines to boot. Guitarist Ron double-duties as backing vocalist but his agonizing high pitched throaty shouts don't really add anything what Thomas can't do - as a result, there's no real vocal interaction, fireworks or trade-offs of any kind between the two. The backing vocals even hinder at certain crucial parts. Thomas (who was a session member at the time) is heard everywhere, except 'Falling Deathwards' features new vocalist Laurens. Vermin have made steady progress as far as songwriting is concerned. "A Nihilistic Swarm" contains the entire "Solypsis" sessions re-recorded for the occasion, 16 tracks and another obligate intro is just too much and filler material is the other of the day. Much of the "Solypsis" material is plagued by a torrent of ballsy groove riffs coming but leading nowhere. The more recent tracks luckily seem to fix this problem and form a more coherent, naturally flowing whole. The awkward Meshuggah-like guitar leads and harmonies do however deserve a rightful mention, same goes for the abstract artwork. As an extra, there's also a promo video for 'Falling Deathwards'. Stand out tracks: 'The Swallowing Vortex', 'Scientific Domination', 'Collapsed Future Visions' and 'Falling Deathwards'.http://www.verminband.nlcomment itWouter 6
