tracklist
01 - Soul Messiah
02 - Dwelling In Disdain
03 - Forsaken
04 - What Could Have Been
05 - This Truculent Path
06 - My Hate Unfolds
07 - Misled
08 - My Passion
09 - Conflicts
10 - Your Pain
11 - Out Of The Body

label: Metal Blade Records, 2003

-= Current Lineup =-

Vocals : Patrick Savelkoul
Guitar : Ronny Tyssen
Guitar : Remy Dieteren
Bass : Rene Rokx
Drums : Gavin Harte

Callenish Circle has always been and with this album continues to be a band that gets better and better as musicians with each album. The music is like a thrash fans wet fucking dream. The vocals are the standard "evil Elmo" black metal vocals mixed with "Cookie Monster" type. High pitch scream/growl combination that is more about trying to be 'extreme' than blending with the music. Some like it some don't. Although it's not my personal taste, I have to say that he does it well...whatever that means. The first song, 'Soul Messiah' hits the ground running with a speed and intensity that any metal fan worth their salt will love and respect. This pace is kept up throughout most of the CD with just enough 'slower' parts to keep you from getting velocitezed. Just when you start to think that every song is going to have this same fast/slow back and forth, the song 'What Could Have Been' comes in like a bulldozer crushing everything in it's path. It's not quite doom, but about as doom as a death/thrash band is expected to get.

A few samples are used to enhance the songs and most of the time they work very well, but at the end of 'My Hate Unfolds' there is this little esoteric speech that just comes off as something one of those goofy Goth chicks would write with black ink on black paper...in the pitch black dark of a freakin' closet. Nothing against most Goth chicks, but just the ones who take it just a little too far. There is a point that it just becomes laughable. Not that this song has any Goth tendencies, but that one ending sample smacks of the same moldy cheese that gives Goth's a bad name...and makes about as much sense as when I ramble on and on with no real point. Oh wait, I did have a point, that ending sample is lame. The rest of it is cool, just ends on a bad note.

Now the CD ends on a really great note with a cover of the Pestilence classic "Out Of The Body". Now many think that I hate Death Metal, can't handle death metal because it's too intense, or a million other knee jerk judgements I have heard. The truth is that I was listening to death metal back in the early 90's. I did this video show in my area called Mosher's Mayhem and we had this segment called the Death Metal Double Dose every week. I know what you're thinking. "Why only two you pussy ass piece of shit"? Well, little child, study your history and you will learn that death metal didn't have too many videos back in the early 90's. Trust me when I say that the death metal fans loved and respected the Death Metal Double Dose and would buy me beers to show their appreciation. What's my point? I am writing this review way too late at night and I ramble when I'm tired. No wait, it's that although I am burnt out from the cookie monster vocals, I still have a lot of respect for the originators of the style. Hearing bands give nods to the first wave of death metal is always good to my ears and that ends this album and this review on a good note. If you expect more from your death metal than just a 45 min blast beat, than this is a must buy.