Casket - Under the Surface (1998)

   Casket was also one of those old school death metal bands, whom it took for a while to release their debut. Though the band was formed with the best itiming in 1990, they only had demo tapes until death metal was nearly vanished from the main scene.
   Maybe the debut didn't have the best timing then, but if the time was needed to put together a great album, it was worth it, because "Under the Surface" was a high quality release, excellent both in themes and sound. The band preferred to stay at middle speed with frequent slow downs, that gave a perfect ground to increase the heaviness of simple themes. Even though these themes are somewhere between basic and primitive, they're not turning into a repetitive groovy bouncing like in most similar cases. Instead the musicians seemed to try out the possibilities how to take out the maximum from this simplicity, so the album became enough diverse to be not boring either. The vocal style reminds to the animalistic deep growls of Joe Ptacek (Broken Hope), that's kind of outsanding and also like an absolute win as an assistance. "Under the Surface" was created in the spirit of the early '90s death metal wave by catching it's most effective aspect. Strongly recommended for the fans of the genre!