Horrendous - The Chills (2012)

   Horrendous might be known nowadays as a progressive death metal band that could have been mainly inspired by the progressive tendencies of the '90s (like the late period of Death and Pestilence), but they've debuted with a decent old school death metal album that had quite genuine approach.

   In total the sound, the themes, the main musical and lyrical concept, and the vocal style perfectly reflected the most advantageous features of the genre. And more importantly even if all that could have sounded very familiar, their themes were written more creatively than to sort them as a simple nostalgia band. "The Chills" have plenty of melodic elements, strong atmospheric touch and even switches to blackened themes could be noticed. This tendency wasn't usual at all in American death metal, and it suspects that the Horrendous was strongly influenced by European bands too. On the side of Death and Pestilence, Asphyx also could be mentioned, and the well known melodic structure of Finnish death metal could be also discovered. The overwhelmingly rude and primitive basic features of the early '90s Floridan scene could be intensly sensed, but this is something more, something different. This seemingly small difference related to the influences had bigger, refreshing effect on the music, especially compared to some who simply desire to reproduce the same thing that was made by others (or by themselves) 30 years ago.