CoC : Metanoia - Time to Die : Review

Metanoia - _Time to Die_
(Diamante, 1999)
by: Alex Cantwell (6.5 out of 10)

_Time to Die_ is Metanoia's third full length, and let me state right away that it is a vast improvement over their previous effort, _Don't Walk Dead_. Vocalist Yowie is a supremely powerful growler, but the addition of black metal vocals to his repertoire, while trendy, makes Metanoia a better band with better songs. I felt that with their previous effort _DWD_ this band was just going too far to be heavy solely for the sake of being heavy, but with this new batch of songs I don't believe that to be the case, as there is a healthy amount of variety here. It seems that the songs on _TtD_ had more thought put into them, and after four listens I have begun to catch what Metanoia are doing, to understand them, and yes, to like them -- but it took repeated listens to reach that point, because on the surface this is just basic death metal. Lisa's bass lines are much more prominent and important to the songs than in past recordings, and her and drummer Ian work well together throughout the fourteen songs, but as was true with all past Metanoia music, these songs are built upon guitarist Steve's crushingly heavy riffs, and rightfully so. Hopefully this band will someday venture out of Australia and tour so that they may pound the willing masses into dust with their 10000 pounds of fury.

(article published 9/12/1999)