Customer Reviews

Spiritual Apocalypse

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I have never considered Monstrosity to be a ground-breaking death metal band. They are essentially an amalgamation of all the best qualities of good American death metal. They draw influence from all the usual suspects, while still managing to carve their own sound. But by the same token, the very nature of their middle-of-the-road approach has not allowed them expand and be ground-breaking. To be sure, they're catchy, technically impressive, and enjoyable, but not ground-breaking.

Though with Spiritual Apocalypse, I believe they have achieved something rare: a death metal album that is actually beautiful. The notion of beauty in death metal always comes with the obligatory grain of salt (roughly the size of a human skull), and this album doesn't change that. There's still a rather warped sense of beauty that death metal fans are attuned to, which comes with years of listening.

But even within those boundaries, Spiritual Apocalypse is an uncommonly gorgeous album. In particular, the song "Remnants of Divination" is singularly pleasing death metal. The guitar melody is enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Monstrosity have done the death metal community a great service here, and the best part is that they know it! How frustrating is it when a band doesn't know what a good thing they've latched onto, and they let it pass by unrealized? Monstrosity allow the songs to flow simply and unimpeded by showmanship (again, in a death-metal-specific sense of what we consider to be too much showmanship). They give the songs the respect they deserve.

Of course, it's not all rose petals and vanilla cupcakes. This album also crushes. But that's to be expected. The only other Monstrosity album I have is Rise to Power. Apparently they have a different vocalist on this one, but I hadn't noticed. Again, the blessing/curse of having a rather generic sound is that they're able to make such line-up changes without the resulting controversy.

Spiritual Apocalypse is on a short list of the best death metal albums of 2008. Amazing work.

I like Monstrosity alot; but this is not as good as there oter albums. I think Rise To Power blows this album away! Checkout that cd before this one. Don't get me wrong Spiritual Apocalypse it's not bad at all. It just doesn't match up to Rise to Power.

Monstrosity is not a new band. They have been around for a long time (since the late 1980's) and were one of the original Florida based bands. The band seemed to be a proving ground where other bands would take members from (Cannibal Corpse, Cynic, Malevolent Creation, Capharnaum and Hate Plow to name a few). John Rubin played guitar, Mark Van Erp played bass and Lee Harrison played drums. Lee has remained the constant within the band through the years. They all played in Malevolent Creation in 1989 and decided to form their own band.

There have been numerous vocalists throughout the years, including George Fischer who has been in Cannibal Corpse since 1996. Well in December of 2006, Mike Hrubovcak (Divine Rapture, Imperial Crystalline Entombment and Vile) joined the band. He has definitely taken Monstrosity to a new level on the band's latest release "Spiritual Apocalypse". His vocals are neither all Cookie Monster nor all Black Metal shreiking, yet he can do both very well and in a unique way. It seems like the new trend in death metal is actually being able to do both well (ie. the new Behemoth).

This album seems well thought out and finds a more mature band. It is also slightly progressive (in a good way) for a pure death metal release. Just listen to "Remnants of Divination", which IMO is the highlight of the album. This song is a masterpiece! All in all a great release and is a must have in any death metal collection! Now GO BUY IT!!!

NECRO NICK (VA)