Review by Daniel for Sinister - Cross the Styx (1992)
Not many people would know this but Dutch death metal outfit Sinister were a huge influence on me & my song-writing for my own death metal band Neuropath back in the early-to-mid 1990's. I've always been a sucker for the more brutal end of death metal & Sinister's debut album "Cross The Styx" came along at just the right time as it found me hungrily seeking out anything I could find in that space, fairly fresh from my discovery of artists like Suffocation & Cannibal Corpse in the previous couple of years. Sinister would no doubt go on to produce stronger albums than "Cross The Styx" in the near future but their first-up effort has never failed to excite me nonetheless as it possesses a rawer underground edge that will always appeal to an old tape trader like myself.
"Cross The Styx" is a full-throttle, no-holds-barred deathfest that was produced by a band that clearly owned a strong understanding of extreme metal. It's relentless in its attack on the listeners senses but, much like Cannibal Corpse, never quite crosses the line into what we now know as the brutal death metal subgenre. Their riffs are more catchy, the vocals are more monstrous & aggressive than they are consciously deep & gutteral & you shouldn't expect to hear any slam breakdowns either. Instead, I'd suggest that Sinister always had a lot more in common with bands like Deicide, Malevolent Creation & Monstrosity than they did Suffocation & Cryptopsy & that suits me just fine too (despite my obvious emotional attachment to the brutal death metal genre).
The musicianship on display isn't overly clinical although one gets the impression that the production job has as much to do with that as the chops of the instrumentalists because the performances sound pretty decent in isolation but when they're layered over the top of each other they tend to sound they're just managing to hold things together. The riffs are excellent though & when combined with some of the most powerful blast beats around you get a pretty imposing brand of death metal. The tracklisting is seriously consistent too with the whole 39-minute duration sitting at a very solid level. The thing that's lacking (& what differentiates "Cross The Styx" from its more classic follow-up "Diabolical Summoning") is the fact that only "Compulsory Resignation" manages to achieve the elite level. One gets the feeling that the material had more potential than that but perhaps the band was simply not quite ready to fill those shoes just yet.
"Cross The Styx" is a wonderful example of a committed & capable bunch of death metal fans creating a record that they'd really want to listen to themselves &, for that reason, it was always gonna appeal to someone like myself. The album made a significant impact on me from my first teenage listen & I recall there being a few months where I found myself consistently drawn back to it, perhaps more than the album's quality justifies too. I guess Sinister & I were simply reading from the same hymn book at that point. While 1993's "Diabolical Summoning" is clearly my favourite Sinister record & I've always had a lot of love for 1995's "Hate" (in fact, I used to wear a "Hate" t-shirt while performing on stage with Neuropath quite a lot), there's no doubt that "Cross The Styx" is a worthy additional to not only your death metal collection but also to the trio of essential releases from these Dutch death metal stalwarts.