[ Death/Thrash Metal ] VII Arcano - Nothingod (2005) torrent

The roots of VII Arcano go back to the year 1989 when a band called Sepolcrum was put together. After a couple of years and several line-up changes the moniker was changed in 1994 into VII Arcano. With a new name the band also changed their musical path from death/doom metal into more melodic Swedish death/thrash oriented metal. Some more line-up changes followed, but finally they managed to record this ?Nothingod? album in 2003. Only until 2005 they started working together with Belgian management agency Hardebaran and Dutch label Two Fat Men, which led to the actual release of ?Nothingod?.

Nowadays it gives a shipload of bands that try to jump on the modern fashion wagon called melodic Swedish death/thrash metal. This modern fashion obviously has led to excellent, interesting bands and releases, but the danger of an overkill feeling is inescapable. This results in the fact that people get more critical and choosey on all those releases. A high quality album can get named as average very quickly. That?s the downside if you choose to ride with that wagon. I think this is the fact with ?Nothinggod?. The album contains nine high quality death/thrash songs that are played very tight and well-done. But there is not one song that really got stuck in my head after listening the album several times! The songs all have the same approach with hardly any differences in the song-building. It blasts and it has it share of melody and all members do their job great, but it lacks a kind of tension and surprising elements. Roughly said; all songs can be seen as the same. The only song that really gets in the picture is Testament?s cover ?Burnt Offerings?, which is done pretty cool!

For me this ?Nothingod? is an album that, despite the quality of the songs on their own, stays together with other nice outputs in the average grey masses. However, the members show to be excellent musicians so I don?t exclude the chance that they will surprise me on a next occasion, but that will have to ask some more development in the song-writing process. Since reviews are based on personal opinions, true fans of this type of metal should check this album out and decide for them selves.

from: www.vampire-magazine.com