Deception - Inferno

DECEPTION - Inferno (DIE TODESRUNE Records - CD 2011)

I was really curious about this album. I obviously had to purchase a copy of it, since I own all the previous Deception materials in my collection, so “Inferno” also had to be in it, but I was very curious about this album especially, since I was questioning the quality of the previous full length CD “Nails Sticking Offensive” a lot. While both demos (“Age of Suffering” and “Holy Deception”) and the debut album (“Nuclear Wind”) were really strong death metal efforts and the music from these releases was really able to cause some serious damage with its relentlessness, ferocity and aggression, then “Nails Sticking Offensive” was a huge disappointment. Not only the songs on it were just dull and not as effective as the previous materials, but also the production on this CD was just awfully bad, I personally hated it, since it only caused an unnecessary mess and chaos, making the music completely unlistenable and unreadable, really. “Nails Sticking Offensive” was and still is pushing me away; I cannot listen to this CD. And this is why “Inferno” was sort of the test for Deception, for me at least. Will the band bring the quality back, will they prove to be worthy band or will they fail again and piss me off again?

Well, right with the first seconds of “Sheep Under the Knife” I knew one thing at least. I’m really glad that “Inferno” got much better production than “Nails Sticking Offensive”. The sound on this album is really powerful, very aggressive and energetic, what is great and for me necessary, when I’m dealing with such an intense and fast death metal music. Really, the difference between those two albums in the productions matters is huge, and I can say that “Inferno” is definitely the best sounding Deception effort so far… which is great news for me. I knew from then on that I won’t be disappointed with this album… and well, I am not, I’ve listened to it several times already, been constantly giving it a spin for past three or four days and I can say that “Inferno” definitely is a good death metal album. It brings back everything what I missed on “Nails Sticking Offensive” and even more, as style wise it doesn’t really just repeats what the band was creating on their early efforts, but is something much more than that. Deception definitely has improved their songwriting, now being able to compose some more diverse stuff, but also came up with some really untypical parts, which are most noticeable in “Manifest”. This one song, not really my favourite one from the album, is definitely a standout track, bringing attention with some untypical, chorus vocals and quite surprisingly played middle part. And if you won’t be pushed away too much by some of those vocal ideas, which Deception used in it, then you’ll also like “I Stand Above You” and “Inferno”. This title song bring also much more surprises, as it starts with clean guitar parts and quite slow, almost sort of epic fragment, which definitely brings a lot of variation and melody to the whole album and lets the listener to take the breath before he’ll get smashed by the death metal wall again.

Meanwhile songs like “Fire, Blood and Death”, “Plague” or “Sheep Under the Knife” are more or less fast and merciless death metal slaughtering pieces and you can be sure that the main part of “Inferno” is also focusing on that, but again – just like “Nuclear Wind” – the whole album  avoids being monotonous and is sticking to just one, unvaried sort of playing. Listen to “Broken Chains of Slavery”, which definitely belongs to my favourite tracks, as an example. More mid paced than really fast, but it has some splendid moments and you can hardly resist screaming “Die Again!!!” with the band. And of course there’s also the title song, which I already mentioned before, which really is something what Deception hasn’t done before, but I must say I really like this track a lot also.

So, I must say that I’m really pleased with what I’ve heard on “Inferno”. I was afraid that Deception will fail to deliver quality death metal again, but that didn’t happen, the band has matured definitely and improved a lot. And I can really recommend “Inferno”, as this album makes me forget about the lousiness of “Nails Sticking Offensive” quickly.

Standout tracks: “Broken Chains of Slavery”, “Plague”, “Nihilistic Act”, “Inferno”

Final rate: 80/100