CoC : Abominator - Subversives for Lucifer : Review

Abominator - _Subversives for Lucifer_
(Osmose, 2001)
by: Quentin Kalis (5.5 out of 10)

_Subversives for Lucifer_ contains music that is a hybrid of black and death metal: music which is of neither of these genres but lies somewhere on a continuum between the two not-so-disparate genres. The guitars are too low to be considered black metal and too trebly to be considered death metal. Similarly, the vocals too do not sit comfortably in either of these two genres. While they may have not created a devastatingly original sound, they have succeeded in creating a sound that is immediately identifiable as "the Abominator sound". But this in itself is insufficient to rescue this album from the realms of banality and mediocrity. Furthermore, it in no way guarantees that the songs presented on _SfL_ are any good -- or even listenable. The songs have no individual personality and are largely interchangeable with each other. If one were to listen to any one song on this release in isolation from the rest of the album, then it wouldn't be so bad. It won't make any top 10 lists, but neither will it make any "worst of" lists. Nevertheless, listening to the entire album from beginning to end is sufficient to test the patience of even the most ardent metal fan. Then the tendency for everything to sound alike will come to the fore. More than simply playing as fast and as aggressively as possible is needed to create a halfway decent metal song. Basically, once you have heard one Abominator song then you have heard them all. This is a pity, as Abominator are competent musicians -- just bad songwriters.

[Paul Schwarz: "Reminiscent in sound of that much-missed late-nineties death machine Angelcorpse (RIP), Abominator's all-blasting, all-growling assault is nudged by its PR and its similarities to the likes of Conqueror into the "war metal" genre as it exists in their native Australia. Unfortunately, Abominator don't have the talents of an Angelcorpse, or even a Krisiun, to forge killer songs from their simplistic riffs and lengthy blast sections, but for a three-piece they pack an impressive, well-measured punch and don't induce insomnia the way many "blast metal" bands do."]

(article published 3/7/2002)