Decrepit Birth: Polarity (2010)

Review

Death metal is my favorite genre, but so far this year the genre has been underwhelming. Thanks for changing that, Decrepit Birth.

Polarity has everything that's great about the Necrophagist/Origin/Decapitated style of technical death metal--the brutality and shred-tastic goodness--but none of the negatives commonly associated with the genre. In other words, they've successfully married technicality with songcraft in a way few have managed before. The resulting album sounds like some Frankenstein creation stitched together from parts of Chuck Schuldiner and Muhammed Suiçmez.

The blastbeats and brutal riffs are there, and so are the death growls. The songs are complex and everything gets changed up often. But the guitar leads have that emotional quality of latter-day Death, and the songs sound like real songs, with a logical progression from one riff to the next instead of random parts thrown in a blender. The production is excellent as well. The only negative thing anyone could possibly say about it is that the vocals are one-dimensional. But when every single track could have worked as an instrumental, the vocals are just gravy, and they work just fine as an extra percussion instrument

Really, it's everything you could possibly want. An album this expertly constructed and emotionally impactful doesn't need much else said about it.

The Verdict: This is easily the best technical death metal album since 2008's Traced in Air, and may be even better than that incredible album. This is an instant classic, and I give it 5 out of 5 stars.