Behind The Mourner's Veil

Deceased have been around a long time and yet this is the of their CD I’ve purchased. My bad. The band plays "old school" (I hate that term...) Thrash/Speed metal that fans of heavy metal like me always appreciate. This MCD contains three new songs by the band, along with covers of Tankard’s "Zombie Attack", D.R.I.’s "Reaganomics" (short!), "New Age Of Total Warfare" by Warfare and Anthrax’s "Deathrider". For some reason it seems that drummer/vocalist King Fowley didn’t feel the need to include any Hammerfall cover. How odd. lol. Ahem..ok. :) There is also a CD-ROM bonus track, a video of "Elly’s Dementia".

One thing is certain is that the 28 minutes of this CD aren’t boring for a second. All the songs are fast-paced, sometimes pretty brutal, and King’s vocals vary a little, sometimes even reminding me of Kreator. I’m quite amazed that the drumming can be so insane considering that he’s also doing the vocals (Ok, that can be fixed in studio, but they still have to deliver the goods live, so he does get the credit!) Something I found interesting on this CD is that even though four of the songs are covers, they flow in pretty good with the other songs - definitely not always the case when a couple of cover songs are added to an album. The cover of "New Age of Total Warfare" is killer. The three new songs, "It’s Alive!", "The Mausoleum" and "Victims of the Masterplan" are all very good thrashers. "Victims of the Masterplan" is ten minutes in length and is made of 5 parts (no pause in between parts). The sound doesn’t really remind me of any particular band so it’s hard to really give a point of comparison. Fact is, if you like heavy/thrash/speed metal deeply rooted in the 80’s sound, Deceased do a very good job of mixing those genres, so chances are you’ll find something you like here. Highly recommended.