Vital Remains - Into Cold Darkness (1995)

My first exposure to Vital Remains was back during the, 'Dechristianize' days, which for me was back during my grim days and I don't remember it making much of an impression on me as a result of my intense love for all things black metal. However last year I witnessed Vital Remains onstage chaos alongside Pestilence and was absolutely blown away with them and when I happened to come across this old album I knew it was time to give the band a chance again, because, 'Into Cold Darkness' is just awesome.

Vital Remains performs death metal in the most sophisticated style and its clear immediately soon as the nearly nine minute epic, 'Immortal Crusade' blasts into your ears. You wouldn't expect a nine minute death metal song to work, but through various tempo changes, progressive-ish touches and even a spoken part alongside all of the ongoing madness it works quite well and isn't a bore at all. Vital Remains also makes a great usage of synths throughout their music, although they are never overly used they are placed at the correct times to fully enhance the music and bring it to even darker plains. While most of the other songs (except, 'Under The Moon's Fog') are in the more typical 3-4 minutes range they still tend to feature a lot of the same characteristics as this opener.

Guitarists Tony Lazaro and Paul Flynn do an exceptional job on this recording with plenty of razor sharp riffs and some superb leads that move effortlessly between rapid heavy blasts to more melodic epic guitar riffage. Likewise Joe Lewis' bass work is decent, although nothing special, but at least its quite audible in comparison to some death metal records. Rick Corbet is also highly impressive behind the drum kit as he pounds away and Jeff Gruslin's guttural roars will surely please any death metal fan.

This being the only Vital Remains album I own and have listened to extensively I can't honestly say if it is the bands finest hour, although I can quite easily tell you that it is a first rate death metal record well worth picking up if you should ever come across it during your CD hunting.