Death Angel - The Art of Dying (2004)^{Release ID: 2891}

This is a real mixed bag. It features some high quality material (see "5 Steps Of Freedom" & album highlight "The Devil Incarnate") mixed in with some fairly ordinary moments (see "No", "Spirit" & "Land Of Blood"). There's definitely quite a bit of punk influence on some of these tracks. Unfortunately that's not something that I'm very interested in so most of the songs that disappointed me tended to be the punkier ones. In fact, when you look at it objectively, "The Art Of Dying" is as much a heavy metal record as it is a thrash metal one. It reminds me of the approach Anthrax took with their "Worship Music" album in that regard. The production is excellent & there seems to be a stronger focus on song-writing over their more riffy older material. The vocal performance continues the improvement we saw on "Act III" & it's actually one of the more enjoyable aspects of the album. Overall "The Art Of Dying" is worth a listen but I won't be returning to it often.