PATHS OF POSSESSION „Promises in Blood”

Music: Death Metal
Country: USA
Website: http://www.pathsofpossession com
Duration:


Cool Songs: Darklands, The Second Coming, Heart For A Heart, Promises In Blood, The Icy Flow Of Death

I initially slapped this disc on the old death deck in the midst of doing some other menial office task, not quite concentrating fully, but nevertheless switched on to the rhythms emanating from my speakers. Having totally ignored the Metal Blade bio until another time, I was completely unaware of just who the hell ‘Paths of Possessions’ were. Then their vocalist let rip with ‘Darklands’ opening line…’Regions of Darkness, untouched by God’. Guttural and instantly recognisable, immediately I did the old double take, checked the line up and sure enough, PoP is fronted by Cannibal Corpse vocalist George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher. For Death Metal aficionados that is pretty exciting news and I’m sure most CC fans will take more than casual listen to this. Unfortunately, from where I sit, the George Fisher link is about as exciting as this gets.

Paths of Possession hail from Florida and were formed in 1999 by Richard Brunelle (Morbid Angel axeman), Randy Butman and Jay Fossen. 2000 saw PoP released a self financed debut album 'Legacy In Ashes' and it wasn’t until 2003 that George Fisher joined the band and recorded a spit cd (with Dark Faith) entitled 'The Crypt Of Madness'. Since then Brunelle has jumped ship and replaced by Jack Goodwin and Nick Goodyear took over the drumming duties from Fossen. With the backing Metal Blade (who else would have signed this band? c’mon!) PoP enlisted uber Death Metal producer of the moment Erik Rutan for ‘Promises in Blood’. This is a twelve track affair, but six tracks are re-recorded tracks from the first two self financed releases and the rest brand new. If you’ve never heard the band before (like me), then I suppose with the hands of Rutan involved, this is the best example of PoP at the top of their game.

As promising as the production is, unfortunately for PoP their material is bog standard and thoroughly unexciting new school death metal. George Fisher obviously believes in this band, but it’s hard to imagine that he’d be giving up his day job for this band anytime soon. Fisher is the clearly the lynch pin in this band and he lends his weighty vocal histrionics in typical fashion. He at least provides some semblance of LIFE to these twelve compositions. Without him, PoP would probably disappear into the ether along with all those hundreds of other solid, but totally unremarkable Death Metal acts. That may still happen, but with Fisher in the mix, there’s a tad more interest abound I’d say.

PoP play a more melodic brand of Death Metal than anything you might associate with CC or Morbid Angel. In fact, even with Eric Rutan’s polished production behind it, ‘Promises in Blood’ actually sounds rather sedate and controlled for a Floridian Death Metal act. The melodic leads and Swedish tinged song structures are an obvious contributor to this – and there’s nothing wrong with that – but, unfortunately everything here just rolls along in a typical homogenous fashion with only a few sprinklings of interesting riff ideas providing some respite. It’s solid, extremely well played etc, etc, but its just middle tier material, far too safe and ultimately not nasty enough to form any long lasting impressions.

If you’re a George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher fans, Paths of Possession will no doubt be a great interest to you. Ultimately though, Fisher can only do so much with bog standard, heard it all before melodically tinged Death Metal. It’s far from being totally dire, but to quite frank the material just isn’t here.

note: Quote: 7

Tracklist

Darklands
Butcher's Bargain
Bleed The Meek
The Second Coming
Where The Empty Gods Lie
Heart For A Heart
In My Eyes
Erzsebet
Promises In Blood
Bring Me The Head Of Christ
Through The Fiery Halls
The Icy Flow Of Death