Blasphemy - Gods of War (1993)^{Release ID: 4748}

After being sorely disappointed in Blasphemy's Fallen Angel of Doom, I was practically begging this album to show more imagination.  I've already found a few bestial black metal albums that I'm really impressed with, and I was hoping that Blasphemy could recreate that for all of their popularity.  This album would have to do.

It was pretty obvious from the first track that these guys were making improvements over their overrated debut.  The production was studio quality, so the dirtiness of the album was overall more effective.  And there were a few little changes in the songwriting as it was much less samey and annoying.  The distinction between black, death, thrash and grind was much clearer here, as we do have a few shorter songs working their way into deathgrind territory, and slight progginess helps create moments of the other three genres while the album remains consistent.  Bottom line, this album had imagination.

But does this mean that I think the different songwriting makes it brilliant?  No, just better than before.  The sad truth is, I don't really get a lot out of these songs as all the different types had already been done better by the likes of Venom, Bathory, Napalm Death, and Death themselves.  This is still pretty basic extreme metal.  I mean, some songs are much better than others, but nothing here really "sucks," it just gets a little boring occasionally.  It eventually gets to the point where the band is recycling all the same tricks in an effort to make things look more imaginative than these things are.

So I'll give this album major points for the obvious improvements over the debut.  Honestly, I wish these guys had continued into a third album because I would've liked to see where they were headed next.  Gods of War is at least a full star over Fallen Angel of Doom, and it's a shame this sophomore release gets second banana to the simple-minded debut.