“Brought back from the wasteland from the great beyond.”
Over the last couple of years, death metal has seen itself go through a creative renaissance. Bands have really delved deep in to the dark and foreboding nature of black metal, added even bigger, soaring choruses than the genre has ever had before, or even added such fast and proficient technicality that would make prog artists bat an eye. But Gatecreeper need none of this – they have their footing in exploring the ever growing re-emergence of the old school death metal sound that bands such as Cannibal Corpse and Obituary popularized in the early 90s. Through hard work, sheer dedication, and pure love for the genre, Gatecreeper have become a band that do this sound just as incredibly as these bands were doing in the genre’s original golden age.
For Dark Superstition, however, Gatecreeper see themselves taking a page out of Swedish melodic death metal bands Dismember and Entombed, particularly their albums Massive Killing Capacity and Wolverine Blues respectively, by adding a really rock and roll esque structure to the songs. A good portion of the album’s riffs and song structures proudly use a rock rhythm that will get people to move around and jump around, whether streamed or live. Some of the songs are catchy in such a ‘death metal’ sort of way that you’ll feel like you’re riding into battle.
This increase in melodic/rock and roll sensibility becomes very apparent from the song on the album “Deadstar“. It has a very catchy and relatively slow paced cadence that really gives you the sense that things are about to get very anthemic. Moving along to track three, the lead single “The Black Curtain” is where the Dismember influence becomes very apparent, as it really flaunts a rock and roll tinged instrumental. Gatecreeper are trying to up that epic feel of the riffs, and all the better for it.
Midway through the album we have “Superstious Vision“, so rock centred that some of its vocal patterns and rhythms wouldn’t be out of place on Paradise Lost‘s Draconian Times. This is by no means a bad thing as the groove on the song is so infectious that it will surely be a favourite at live shows. You may think that by this point in the album there’s no way that Gatecreeper could inject any more rock sensibility into the album, this however couldn’t be further from the truth. “Flesh Habit” sounds like they took Sisters of Mercy‘s “Lucretia My Reflection” and turn it into a death metal song. The late 80s charm wins out, and I really hope we see more of on future albums from Gatecreeper. The closing track “Tears Fall From The Sky” brings back the sort of menacing and lurching feel to the more melodic side of the album. It couldn’t be a better choice for the closer, as it’s a really good midway in between the more melodic and the heavier sides of Gatecreeper’s sound that is so interwoven into Dark Superstition.
All this talk of melodic sensibilities and rock oriented approaches within this review, you may think that this album a fairly soft and a really slow paced album – you would be sorely mistaken. Tracks “Oblivion” and “Mistaken For Dead” contain some of the fastest riffs that the band has ever recorded in their career. No doubt these will result in some really large circle pits at shows in the future. Pre-release track, and the first song released from the album, “Caught in the Treads” and the track “A Chilling Aura” bring that famous Flordian death metal to these otherwise more Swedish melodic death metal-esque songs, really making the tracks pop even more than they already do. Finally, the last single “Masterpiece of Chaos” showcases the full vocal range of frontman Chase Mason in a way that is to sure make fans really smile.
I don’t think there really is much negative to be said about the album. On one hand, it would have been nice if the more melodic songs on the album didn’t wear their influences so obviously on their sleeves, in a way that you can almost tell what the band was listening to when they were writing the album. However, with an album as interesting as Dark Superstition, this really is a minor gripe that ultimately does not bother me all that much, and really won’t bother most people in general.
Gatecreeper’s third studio album Dark Superstion is a resounding success. It shows that the band has a lot of love for the death metal genre and the bands that made the genre so interesting, while also showing that the band is more than willing to change up their formula, so that their sound doesn’t stagnate and remains fresh for years to come. The record will almost undoubtedly see Gatecreeper continue their upward trajectory into one the of the absolute best and most interesting bands in death metal right now.
8/10
Dark Superstition releases on May 17th and you can pre-order it here.