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After what seemed like at least a year and a half delay, Encryptor's sophomore album Sermon Decay has finally been released. It had originally been planned for release on Sounds of the Dead Records, and for whatever reason it is now being release on Dysmorphic Records.
First off, two things catch my attention. One, the packaging is super cool. I love the artwork on this release....very death metal!! And two, the production is much more consistent on this release than on Drowning in Flesh. Now, that is not to say that the production is all that great, but it's better than before.
For the most part here, Phil Diez treats us to about 38 minutes full of brutal, underground death metal including a Goredeath cover to start the album off. Nothing extrememly flashy or different than your standard death metal outfit...just grinding guitars, sickening gutteral vocals, and blasting-a-plenty. It seems here that the drumming is a little more consistent than on the first Encryptor disc. On that disc, Diez sometimes seemed to "get tired" while blasting away, and this disc seems to show more stamina. Although, most of the blastings is in short bursts. Diez will just chugga chugga on the guitars at a nice slow pace, then go crazy with blasting, then slow the pace back down, than fast again, then slow.
Overall, I'd say this is an improvement in every area for Encryptor...from vocals, to production, to packaging, to drumming, etc... However, it wasn't as big a step forward as I was hoping for. The drastic difference between the first Sorrowstorm album and the Funeral Oath EP was the kind of difference I was expecting here. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Not to say this is a bad album. It's a step in the right direction, but it has shown more-so that Sorrowstorm is the band in which Phil Diez' biggest promise is shown. One other good thing I might add though...the lyrics are included this time around. So, there's no more looking up lyrics on the internet.
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