SEPTICFLESH
Modern Primitive
NUCLEAR BLAST
Greece’s symphonic death metal conductors keep the wheels spinning
Septicflesh look for fresh inspiration
THE SEPTICFLESH STORY is well established by now. They formed in 1990, darted through every death metal subgenre under the sun to see what would stick, then split in 2003, citing commitments to their higher education. They returned five years later with Communion – an orchestral black/death fireball so destructive, heavy and grandiose that it could have soundtracked the apocalypse itself. What’s come since is a decade and a half in the same mode, with strings and choirs swelling over chugging riffs and Seth Siro Anton’s roars.
Modern Primitive is more of the same. As a result, your enjoyment of it rests solely on whether you can handle Septicflesh treading identical turf for the fifth time in a row. Those of you who can will get another morose, bombastic metal symphony. The album again exhibits the band’s longest-running irony; for all the 80-piece orchestras they’ve bombarded metalheads with, their most triumphant instrument has always been Sotiris Vayenas’ clean singing. It’s his pipes that are behind Modern Primitive’s biggest earworm, belting out an instantly replayable ‘Why do we fall?’ during the title track, and they hammer home the hook of Hierophant.