DEICIDE - In The Minds Of Evil

EDIT: For some reason blogger/blogspot isn't breaking down lines properly, resulting in a messy last-word-in-a-line brain fuck. I apologise. We are trying to fix this problem. Thanks for reading anyway. - The Ed 
It is always a profound pleasure to receive a new album by Deicide, one of the death metal genre's original masters and longtime personal favourites of mine. There's much that can be said about their career, and their previous albums, but that's for another time. Instead I'm delving directly into this new piece of blasphemous brutality.

I had extremely high expectations to In the Minds of Evil, due to the fact that their last album, To Hell With God turned out to be my favourite one by the band since Once Upon the Cross came out in 1995, and that is no mean feat. My hopes were greatly strengthened by the two songs that were released during the build-up towards the release date, the delicious title track and "Thou Begone", which I think is perhaps the greatest song Deicide has released since "Christ Denied". To my great pleasure though, these were only a taster of a much more varied, more old school influenced collection of Deicide stompers, absolutely top notch death metal mastery.

If you know Deicide, you can safely guarantee that a new album is not going to stray far from their proven recipe. And thankfully so. In the Minds of Evil is a fluid procession of To Hell With God, but the band just sounds more focused this time around. Everything has been tweaked and amped and I dare say, perfected. The music, the attitude, the performances of each member is on a higher level, and the sound on the album is utterly fantastic. I have to say that Lord Benton's vocals sound absolutely amazing and it's obvious that he put a lot of effort into them, we're talking some Grade-A viciousness right here.

While I'd be inclined at this time to say that the predecessor has a couple of better tracks, such as the "Servant of the Enemy" and "Empowered by Blasphemy", the new tracks are already catching up; "Thou Begone", "In The Minds Of Evil" and "Godkill" are standout tracks, but the album is more fluid, more consistent and works much better as a whole.

It's a full mark piece, a 5/5 verdict. Deicide have been tapping into a newly found / replenished source of power and their last two releases are a testament to that fact. Deicide prove yet again that they're still a hard act to follow when they are at the top of their game. True masters of the genre. ALL HAIL DEICIDE! [Century Media]
- Atli Jarl Martin

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