Band:	Bloodsoaked
Album:	The Death Of Hope
Style:	Brutal death metal
Release date:	July 2011

01. Lies
02. Forever Damned
03. No God
04. Infestation
05. Consume The Flesh
06. Mauled
07. The Death Of Hope
08. Wading The Blood Pools
09. Obsessed With Hate
10. Grinding Your Guts

Like an overweight, recently deceased hippy, this album is chunky and groovy as hell. That is, if said hippy were to have maggots eating its eyes and a knife buried in its skull. We're dealing with death metal here. Death metal written and performed by one dude, Peter Hasselbrack--a dude who, regardless of his non-innovativeness on this thing, deserves respect. He's pulled off a really solid, albeit pretty generic, death metal album? again.

The riffs are a bit more technical than they were on his previous albums. But definitely not in the bleep-bloop-wing-wakka-wakka-ping kind of way; they're still, in a "I can't not bang my head to this" way, kept comparatively simple. And they're thick, heavy, vicious, and masterfully performed. Triplets are used, not abused, solos grow, they don't sound forced, etc. Meanwhile, Hasselbrack bangs away on the drums, and fiddles with the bass like a pro. The guy is a talented motherfucker, there's no question at all about that.

But his vocal performance is a tad shaky on this thing. He's changed his vocal style since his '09 LP, adopting a breathier, less powerful voice. It isn't by any means weak, but his vocals aren't as in-your-face, wrecking-ball to the ears brutal as they were way back in '09. This really would be a minor complaint, but since his voice isn't very robust, it's pretty easy to hear the lyrics. Which happen to be, well, bad. Surprise!

Most of the time, I'm in the camp where the goofier lyrics are, the better. And the ones here are pretty goofy. But somehow just not quite goofy enough for me. There are stereotypical lines about cannibalism and murder, the ones that we all know and expect from brutal death groups, but they just don't come across as funny as your average Cannibal Corpse lyrics, for example. There's something about the delivery that seems too serious. But I honestly can't say why that is. I suspect it has something to do with the sincerely mean sounding guitar work, but don't go quoting me on that.

Honestly though, this is motherfucking death metal, and if you seriously care about dm lyrics, you can gtfo. So I'll just shut up about these now. This album is about the riffs, and the production knows where the riffs belong. In focus. And since Hasselbrack is a brass-tacks shredder, that's what makes this a really solid, respectable death metal album.