Another bone that I have to pick with Fragile Existence is the mixing of the drums. Now I'm not attacking anyone's artistic ability here, but how you mix your drums can be really crucial as to how powerful your album sounds. There seems to be a huge gap between the volume on the bass drum and the volume on the snare. The blast beats on "A Gradual Decline" and "The Resilience to Fire" are perfect examples of a bass drum that's just too loud, it's overpowering the snare and making the blast beat sound like a mess despite the skill with which it was executed.

_Departing the Damned_ is not an entirely repulsive album though. There is some impressive lead guitar work on "Honour Among Thieves" and "Violence Instilled". In spite of those few sporadic moments of guitar brilliance, this is not an album that I enjoyed listening to. There is definitely some skill here which shows promise regarding the level of musicianship; though I would expect a tough time for Fragile Existence trying to make it in this world with their very typical type of death metal. The part that really needs work in my humble point of view is the production. Whatever skill available on this album was just spoiled by its production, which drastically mitigated the impact it could have made.