Three years since their last full length, Black To The Blind, Poland’s Vader have returned, signing with Metal Blade Records to pick up where they left off. I will be the first to admit that I did not like Black To The Blind in the least, I found it to be extremely soft and boring for my liking. When I heard the band had signed to Metal Blade I had mixed emotions, on one hand, it was great to see a band who have put so much work into touring and supporting and promoting themselves finally getting their due, however, it seems as though most bands who start off at another label and end up on Metal Blade seem to get tamer and softer, and considering how little I enjoyed their last CD, it’s safe to say I was highly skeptical. Upon listening to this CD around twenty or so times, it’s very apparent the band has improved a great deal since their 1997 release, however, are still a long way away from being as great as they were 10 years ago when they released classics like Necrolust, Morbid Reich and The Ultimate Incantation. The album does have some great tracks like "Xeper", "The Calling" and "The Final Massacre", all of which should be able to get people to at the very least nod their heads, if not ripping them out of their seats and getting them to thrash about wildly. However, not all is well with this release. The music is still highly Slayer-influenced death metal, with a few tribute-like riffs tossed in here and there, which I found to be cool, but it lacks the intensity and aggression of Vader’s earlier songs. Three-quarters of this CD sounds like filler material, with the same redundant pattern found on Black… The band really has not progressed, but at the same time, they haven’t gone back at all, they’ve more or less remained the same band they were three years ago, writing one or two great songs on an album with ten songs so monotonously boring they can’t even be listened to. I think I may have been able to tolerate this album a bit more if it weren’t for the repetitive drum patterns employed by Doc; blast, fill, blast, fill, blast, fill… it just gets boring very quickly, also the triggering of the kick drums sounds pretty horrendous. I realize there are people out there who only just heard of Vader a few years back when they released Black To The Blind, if people dug it, they should definitely pick up the new one, however, I personally would recommend people find Necrolust, Morbid Reich, The Ultimate Incantation, Sothis and De Profundis long before I’d recommend Litany. That’s not to say there isn’t some great stuff on Litany, it’s just their earlier material have more high quality songs than their past few releases. Either you love it, or hate it, there’s really no in between with this CD.

Written By: Teufel