Not that I'm accusing Metal Blade of playing catch-up. To their credit, they have been dilligently peddling death metal for longer than most. You just have to wonder where the quality control department were when Fate put pen to paper and signed their contracts. This impetulant Californian posse tick every one of the boxes that recent efforts by the likes of Brain Drill and Job for a Cowboy have managed to, bar one: the ability to write a proper fucking song.

Without exception, every track across the expanse of _Vultures_ is a patchwork quilt of mundane technical death metal and hardcore that is thoroughly devoid of both atmosphere and a single semblance of anything approaching a personality. Justin Krahn's unintelligible garble doesn't help matters any, but it's tracks like "Your Creed Is Greed", where the band just seem to be sticking random sequences together for the hell of it, that really underline their downfall. With crap like this doing the rounds, you can't blame anyone for thinking that death metal has lost some of its bite.