• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Holy Mother Mary's rotting corpse! I'll admit to being a fan of Viogression since the beginning, with Expound and Exhorti and Passage serving as strong competition for Obituary, a band that many claim Viogression was a carbon copy of when that's really only true if you go by the vocals alone. They split back in 1994 but reformed 20 years later and released the EP A Pure Formality, which showed the band stretching themselves past their initial Obituary comparisons with more progressive and strange songwriting than before. Now, over eight years later, they have finally returned with their third album, 3rd Stage of Decay, and it proves they are more than just a one-trick pony like many claim.

Musically, this is similar to the EP in that it contains some fairly progressive moments, only here they lean harder on their roots to make a sound that's more individual. Most of the tracks on here are violent old-school Death Metal done right, but it's when they experiment with more progressive elements where they truly shine. For example, "Caliginous Conflagration" sounds like a strange mix of Demilich and Dr. Shrinker without being a mere ripoff, and "Cipher" may well be the best song they've ever done, taking every progressive idea they have shown off and putting it together into an almost mammothite slab of old-fashioned Death Metal that's not afraid to take risks. Frankly, that's the best way to describe what Viogression has become, so even if you found their older works to be derivative, 3rd Stage of Decay may have something to impress you as much as it has me.