Band:	Fester
Album:	A Celebration Of Death
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	March 2012

01. Rites Of Ceres
02. The Black Tower
03. March Of Death
04. I'll Hunt You Down
05. Metalized
06. Jeg Spytter På Deg
07. Last Day Of Battle Pt. 1
08. Last Day Of Battle Pt. 2
09. A Face For A Funeral
10. Rites Of Mortiis [feat. Mortiis]

Fester? A Celebration Of Death?...Damn, here comes more generic death met...Wait a minute, this can't be right; old school, yet fresh sounding? Well, maybe "fresh" might not be the right word, as this album is grimy as shit, maybe just..."not generic" is a better way of putting it.

All the pieces to A Celebration Of Death are fairly used, but the whole thing is brought together with such personality none of the attempts at creating that nasty, evil feeling are failures. Fester play this sort of raw mix of (mostly) down-tempo black & death metal. A bit slower, but always quite at that doomster level, just a good marching pace. This slightly slower feel to the whole thing really just showcases the incredibly dark riffs here. So what's the kicker? What makes this album particularly special? The only thing that comes to mind is the subtle industrial undertones shown throughout that help complete that cold, hard sound. Other than that, it's just a solid, convincing job mixing infectious riffs with a deep, horrific atmosphere.

It's all good. There's nothing on here that specifically needs improvement, yet it's not quite what you would call a knock-out album. Maybe a little more identity in the individual components of this band is what's needed. As a collective, these guys have a fairly unique sound, but there's nothing here that really stands above anything else. No focal point I guess you could say. Granted, not having your music revolve entirely around one instrument is a good thing, but having something shine a bit from time to time is nice.

A Celebration Of Death is a tasteful, experienced sounding album. Safe enough to be appealing to a more basic desire for extreme metal, yet fresh new sounding enough to not be flavourless.