With a line-up consisting of members of Iniquity and Benediction I had very high hopes for Downlord’s debut full length offering, Random Dictionary Of The Damned. Unfortunately some things are better on paper than they are in reality, which is the case with this line-up’s effort.

Let me start by saying Random Dictionary Of The Damned is not a bad album, but it definitely failed to meet my expectations. One listen to any Iniquity or Benediction full length offering and you’ll likely become an instant fan, unfortunately, the members contributing to this effort are Iniquity bassist Thomas Fagerlind and Benediction vocalist Dave Ingram, none of the song writers from either of those bands is involved in this project with the majority of the song writing and guitar playing being handled by Donovan Spenceley (who?) and Rene Falther of Jaded (again, who?).

The material on Downlord’s debut full length is a mix of old school Scandinavian, British and Floridian death metal which, again, is good in theory, however the reality is the material sounds very generic. Had this album been recorded 15 years ago it would likely be heralded as one of the greatest triumphs in death metal, however this isn’t 1992 and there have been a lot of much better old school death metal albums released since then and even after the release of Random Dictionary Of The Damned.

The material is well played, with a solid production and good performances by all of the artists involved. The music itself is by no means bad, it’s actually quite good, but it honestly just sounds very dated. If you haven’t been listening to death metal for the past 15 years and heard this release you’d probably feel the same way I did the first time I heard Entombed’s Clandestine, Grave’s You’ll Never See or even Obituary’s Cause Of Death, but this isn’t 1992 and it certainly isn’t one of those albums. It’s solid, good, but not great, old school death metal that’s worth a listen or two, but not much more than that.

Review byTeufel