Reviews list for Malevolent Creation - Retribution (1992)

The 1991 debut album "The Ten Commandments" from Buffalo death metallers Malevolent Creation was a pretty big record in my household with both Ben & I finding a lot of appeal in their thrashy take on the exciting American brand of death metal that was dominating the underground market at the time. Based that experience, I was super-keen for another dose by the time 1992's "Retribution" sophomore record hit the record store shelves & went about purchasing it on cassette post-haste. If anything, "Retribution" hit me even harder than their debut & it's subsequently gone on to become my favourite Malevolent Creation release to this day. It saw the band dropping the majority of their thrash influence for a much purer death metal sound that was exactly the sort of stuff I was into at the time (& arguably always will be). It's a relentless record that balances its brutality with a strong sense of memorability & professionalism that immediately reenforced the suspicions that Malevolent Creation were going to be a mainstay of the US death metal scene for many years to come.

I've always thought of "Retribution" as somewhat of a classic release but unfortunately this revisit has seen me reevaluating that position. It's certainly a very solid effort that ticks all of my boxes but the reality is that, even though it offers an impressive level of class & consistency throughout the nine tracks included, there's not really enough genuine classics here to justify me placing it alongside the Death's & Morbid Angel's. Instead, I feel that "Retribution" placed Malevolent Creation at the front of the second tier with the highlight moments seeing the album lapping at the heels of the bigger name players. Perhaps the reason I've tended to think of it as a top tier record over the years has been driven by the way the tracklisting kicks off with the album beginning with its four strongest songs. Opener "Eve of the Apocalypse" is a stunning example of the US death metal sound & is arguably the band's career highlight while I also regard the more controlled "Coronation of Our Domain" as a genuine classic. And what about that breakdown in the iconic "Slaughter of Innocence", a song that I tried to convince my Neuropath band mates to cover back in the mid-1990's. The back end of the album tends to sit more within itself with this material lacking the obvious hooks of the earlier songs, even if it's all still pretty strong solid stuff in its own right.

The influence of the first couple of albums from fellow Buffalo death metallers Cannibal Corpse is obvious throughout & so is that of the self-titled Deicide record which leads to comparisons with the debut album from Florida's Monstrosity "Imperial Doom" which shared similar sources of inspiration. The vocals of front man Brettt Hoffmann are the excellent with his monstrous death growl proving to be both aggressive & easily intelligible. Former lead guitarist Jeff Juszkiewicz had been replaced by former Solstice & future Cannibal Corpse shredder Rob Barrett with Barrett adding further weight to an already imposing death metal sound. His Solstice band mate & drummer Alex Marquez has also come across to fill the stool that was previously filled by Mark Simpson with Marquez's pummeling performance only advancing Malevolent Creation's death metal credentials, despite the fact that his chops weren't as yet as tight as your metronomical modern-day skinsman.

There's not much between "The Ten Commandments" & "Retribution" to be honest but I still tend to favour "Retribution", perhaps only because its approach is a little more in line with my personal taste profile. There can be no doubt at all that these two are the band's best records though & I think it's a bit of a shame that Malevolent Creation have never amounted to more given the solid way they began their recording career & their longevity in the scene. I've generally checked out each of their eleven remaining studio albums as they hit the streets but have unfortunately found them to be pretty hit & miss with none of them being strong enough to be regarded as essential releases.

Daniel / May 22, 2024 08:29 PM

I find that some albums get talked about in hushed tones amongst peers, internet forums and album reviews generally. There's a catgeory of albums in most genres of music that has a label akin to "Classic Album Not Freely Recognised As Such". Quite where these albums go to after release in terms of the recognition stakes is no real mystery when you think about it, with most of them being released around a particular boom time for a genre and them just getting lost in the plethora of qualty releases of the time only to be picked up in years to come and almost reborn in some cult status awarde by devout fans of the genre.

Malevolent Creation's second album is one such album that comes up now and again in such conversations, and whilst I don't believe it does necessarily warrant a "classic" tag as such there's still so much to appreciate about this record that it is really unfortunate that it is not up there with the regard I hold for Last One On Earth, Acts of the Unspeakable, Tomb of the Mutiliated, Legion. The IVth Crusade or Onward to Golgotha all of which landed in the same year as this record.

There's certainly a rabid edge to Retribution that matches the Deicide release quoted and there's certainly a level of intensity to proceedings that draws comparison to the Cannibal Corpse release also of the same year. These comparisons come from Hoffman's vocals and the pummeling attack of the instrumentation in no small parts but I actually don't get on with the vocals that well. If anything, at times I find he has too much to say and things become a little cumbersome around the delivery and flow of the tracks. The rest of the time he's doing nothing wrong and things feel much more cohesive and structured.

That niggle withstanding (and as Ben alludes to in his review) this is actually a great death metal album that simpy gets overlooked by more prominent and more obvious classic releases from the same year. There's nothing new here most definitey and whatever the reason may be that you find yourself coming late to the record it still hampers the experience of it because you will have already heard such great output both from the same year and subsequently over the years. Still worthy of a spin though.