GATECREEPER "Deserted"

GATECREEPER

"Deserted"

"Deserted" is chunkier than an aircraft carrier full of Skippy peanut butter. These Arizona facebreakers are all about the thick, chunky beatdown on their second Relapse album. This is not an album for fans of high velocity faceripping DM. Almost everything here is firmly rooted in a rhinoceros-like mid-paced attack, coated in a nice layer of classic Swedish chainsaw guitar sound.

It makes for a pretty catchy record, but not anything that is going to rip your world to shreds. Not every album has to hit a towering home run; it's nice just to hear something from a competent band that knows exactly what they are aiming for. "Puncture Wounds" and "Barbaric Pleasures" are two cuts where the pace picks up to a slightly more intense pace, but those are the exceptions. Most here is in the mode of the swinging, crunchy title track or the evilly grooving "Ruthless". "From The Ashes" has a doomy, even haunting tone to it and "Absence of Light" is pure crawling death doom. Nothing drags on too long and nothing seems rushed.

Not what one would call a "classic" album but "Deserted" is a pleasing continuation of Gatecreeper's career. I preferred it over the last UNLEASHED album and they are one of the few American bands to do Swedish death metal well.

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