Review Summary: A great album that can be summed up as the following : distinctly Vader, for better or worse
With three years separating the debut record of Polish death metal stalwart Vader and its follow-up, it would be a fair expectation for the band to have utilized that time to evaluate what worked on 'The Ultimate Incantation' and to adapt lessons learned in the intervening EP 'Sothis.' The former of the two was a solid release in its own right, showcasing the knack for crafting riffs that were simultaneously catchy and also heavy, whilst the latter showed off differing tempo dynamics. Many fans of the band considered 'Sothis' to be a huge step up, and so were doubtless wondering whether the band could continue in this upward trajectory on 1995's 'De Profundis'.
This sophomore release has a remarkably clean and precise sound to it, especially when compared to some of the muddy or flat-sounding death metal releases of the day, and this helps to make an immediate positive impression. After the briefest thunderclap sound effect, the band begins a full-fledged assault on the ears with their recognizable blast beats backing Slayer-sounding tremolo riffs. The band then relentlessly move through half a dozen more riffs, some of the slower and chunkier variety, whilst the drums continue to adjust the tempo, leading up to a decided unremarkable verse section. Sadly, the band were unable to shed all of the remaining dead skin carried over from 'The Ultimate Incantation,' as these more underwhelming passages do still exist here, alongside Piotr's overly forced vocal performance. The one criticism I have of the production of this album is that the vocals sound disconnected from the rest of the music, and this detracts from the overall sound due to their weak nature. Piotr bears all the hallmarks of a vocalist who had the Dave Mustaine attitude of, "nobody quite fits our sound, and therefore I must do this myself."
Thankfully, despite the couple of negatives just mentioned, this sensation of something being a little "off" does not linger for long. The riffs here are a clear leap ahead of their debut, shifting tempos more frequently, and rarely do a pair of riffs sound disjointed. In this sense, that one less impressive moment of the opening track 'Silent Empire' serves as a rare deviation from an otherwise stellar guitar performance. The solos - a real cause for concern in the debut - are much tighter here, and the kinetic introductory riff to 'Blood Of Kingu' shows off the bands desire to move beyond the primarily tremolo-picked songwriting of the first album. Two songs here were taken from the 'Sothis' EP, and they sound even better here when accompanied by the thicker production. Sothis' excellent three-note bursts hit the eardrums like a machine gun burst, whilst Visions And The Voice has an off-kilter style of riffing, with each guitar line being captivating and balanced well against those either side of it. When the blast beats are used in the build-up to the verse, a pinnacle of brilliance for this band is achieved, and one that they have tried to recapture ever since.
Chinks in the band's armour are very few and far in between around the time of writing and recording this album, and yet it is not an album that many would say falls into a "classic" tier of 90's death metal albums. 'De Profundis' finds a band that were firing on all cylinders, and can be placed amongst the finest work they would ever release, and yet it still can be accused of the same complacency of writing that every other album the band has written can have attributed to. Whilst the riffing within the songs themselves might be varied, and the tempo of the drumming constantly adjusts - here collapsing lungs with blast beats; there, settling into a mid-tempo groove whilst the band plays a thrashy palm-muted riff - these songs are distinctively Vader, and that means the album is one where the songs overall aren't too distinguishable from one another. This is a band that has a vast catalogue of albums, and yet they are essentially one and the same, with varying levels of stagnancy setting in over time until a sonicboom bought them back to life in 2011. This is undoubtably one of their strongest collections of songs, and were it their only album it would be a masterpiece. As it is, 'De Profundis' is an excellent excuse to spend thirty-five minutes inseparable from a pair of headphones, but doesn't elevate itself above many much better albums of the day.
