Since I first heard Leading Vision I was sold on Gorod, and that album still stands as an absolute peak in modern technical death metal. Gorod are the idealistic band of this style: ass-kicking riffs, enough technicality to make any self-respecting musician doubt their skill, but avoiding the ram-it-down-your-throat-widdle-away-through-the-album approach. 2012 sees Gorod unleash their fourth full-length studio effort, and sadly sees the band's sound beginning to stagnate.

Their previous album Process of a New Decline was good, if patchy in places, and on A Perfect Absolution things are pretty much just patchy. One thing that sticks out to me is that the music really doesn't fit the album cover; with the cover having a warm natural feel I was hoping this could have been reflected in the music, but really it's just the same old cold mechanical Gorod. Here and there are odd moments of genre influence outside of metal, "5000 at the Funeral" has a jazz style intro and there are some almost funk moments in the middle of "Carved in the Wind".

The best track here is easily "Tribute of Blood" which is Gorod doing what they do best, boasting an array of bad-arse riffs. As is always the case with Gorod the music is very well played, and tech nuts are going to blow their loads over the solos here, sadly for me nothing on here besides the odd moment of quality here and there and the aforementioned "Tribute of Blood" stick out. Fairly average material from a not so average band, I can only hope we see a leap in songwriting come their next release.