Gorguts – Colored Sands

…And Then Came Gorguts

In the early ’90s, death metal was at its peak; bands were forming all across the globe, from the United States to the chilly plains of Scandinavian countries. Canada is a country not typically cited for such extreme music, and yet it was there that old school death metal band Gorguts was formed in 1989. They quickly established a name for themselves with their legendary …And Then Comes Lividity demo tape, and their classic debut Considered Dead. After three more albums, the band stopped releasing LPs for over a decade. Their latest work, Colored Sands, has broken their long silence with nine tracks of ear-splitting technical death metal.

As with their last few albums, Colored Sands is primarily a modern sounding death metal record. As such, it is largely different from their early formulas, and instead makes use of intricate riffs, odd tempos, and unexpected turns. In fact, the technicality of the songs is perhaps the best thing the album has going for it, as it immediately captures attention. Apart from that, the vocals sound demonic and hateful, giving the songs a classic black metal feel to them. In contrast, there are also unexpected aspects to this release; in fact, there is an orchestral, classical music influenced track on here, “The Battle of Chamdo,” which sounds more like Beethoven and nothing like Gorguts.

The rest of the album features what one would expect from an extreme metal release. Of course, there are heavy guitars, fast paced drums, and evil sounding atmospheres. To those who are huge fanatics of their early work, however, the biggest let down of this release is that it utterly fails to outperform their first couple of releases. As a result, their new work will likely continue to live in the shadow of their debut album. That said, Gorguts have still improved greatly from their last couple of releases, keeping the negative aspects of this album to a minimum.

Colored Sands is far from an overall failed attempt, because at least the band has improved and is genuinely attempting to create quality death metal. As such, it is an album worth checking out if you find technicality and extreme sounds to be appealing.