dead shape figure the disease of st vitus

Released: 15 November 2010 Label: Dynamic Arts Records

It's an industry adage that second albums are traditionally awkward affairs, as bands have already used their best material on their debut, and have to come up with entirely new stuff in what is typically a far shorter writing period.

Thankfully, where thrash and death metal bands are concerned, this adage usually falls flat on its face. The Disease of St Vitus is indeed Dead Shape Figure's second release and it continues admirably the thrashy aggression and musical dexterity of their impressive debut The Grand Karoshi. Its fast and jumpy stuff, with each track having an absolute overload of monster riffs.

Suicide Continental is a frenetic and hard hitting opener, with breakneck riffs and frantic roaring vocals. The only blip being the unwelcome few bars of rapping which reminded me of An Audience with Strijka's Ain't That Just Norway (!) but thankfully a middle third of brutal chugging gets everything back on track and the savage double-kick of Mohkis' drum attack resumes.

Their first video from the album is for the track Face on the Nails. A crunching song with a number of gear changes, and numerous vocal styles. It's aggressive and discordant with some impressively leftfield anti-melodies within the vocals, that reminded me of the off kilter charm of the likes of Voivod.

There's a surfeit of tempo changes too on this album, although it is largely full speed ahead, but on Felix Culpa there's an effective ambient downshift of the gears, that gives the listener a chance to catch their breath for a moment. After a bit of nifty guitar interplay, the song wastes no time in getting back to the manic riffage for an immense ending.

Idiopolis has an epic, early-Metallica sounding intro, with the twin guitars of Juhani Flinck and Kride Lahti creating an awesome build up. The rest of the song is another brutal speed fest, with particularly fine drumming.

Shrouds is my favourite track on the album, with its heavy mid-paced chugging guitar and the distinctive alternating between clean vocals (where he sounds like a dead ringer for Denis Belanger at times!) and roared cookie monster. The riffs too switch effortlessly from neat arpeggiations, to thrashing brutality.

Fastest tune on the album is the closer Cities of the Plain which crams a hell of a lot of speed riffage into a tad under three mintues!

The only thing I personally didn't like on The Disease of St Vitus was the intrusion of the rap-style vocals. Whilst this may well be their gimmick, giving their music a "modern" aspect, to me it just sounds a bit shit to be honest. Hip hop and rap got old very quick for me back in 1987 when I saw that there wasn't any actual music involved!

Having said that the mix of vocal styles from front man Galzi is seriously impressive, going from clean spoken vox through to roaring cookie monster in the space of a single line of the lyric!

Thankfully though, these rap interludes are never around for long – and don't really detract from the brutality and aggression of the music overall. It boils down to personal preference and I am admittedly a curmudgeon in this regard. Still, an enjoyably powerful "modern" metal release!

by Steven Hargraves