After Death-Retronomicon

Iron Pegasus
2007

Something about this CD had me a little confused and it wasn't just the odd album title. It had to do with the music, it was this nagging feeling of familiarity with many of the songs. Yet it took me a few plays to place where I heard this style before. Then it came to me on about the third play of this CD. A good chunk of the material at least musically sounds like someone followed Kind Diamond into the studio around 87-90 and grabbed up some mid-tempo outtakes and then held on to them for years before slapping on some gravel like vocals and updating the drums a little. Actually this is a project from drummer/singer Mike Browning (Morbid Angel, Nocturnus, Incubus) and this CD includes songs recorded by different line-ups of the band from 2000 to 2006. There is some heaviness to it, but at best it's just mildy interesting and it's worse it's mind-numbingly dull. If your music is going to drone rather flow, you still have to have something to draw people in. This is more like filler with very little direction, it's like they are just sort banging around a little without any real rhyme or reason. The production is decent, but that kind of makes the album's flaws just all that more apparent. Obviously they got fascinated with gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt and there are various ramblings about mythology and such, but it doesn't matter much since the music isn't going to keep your attention enough and quite frankly neither will the vocals. The ancient pharaohs may not roll over in the tomb from this album, but like me they won't be too excited about it either.

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