The Seven Gates-Angel of suffering

Heavy Artillery
2009


When I see the big tank and the Heavy Artillery logo I know that I am in for retro metal of some sort. French act the Seven Gates have been around just since 2006. This is old school death metal that is highly influenced by the likes of Deicide, Morbid Angel and Autopsy. That's fine because I was certainly liked those bands back then when death metal was beginning as an offshoot from thrash. The only problem is that The Seven Gates have taken classic death metal and presented it with very little fire and enthusiasm. They have the heaviness down to a passable level, but the speed is sub-par and they just glide through the motions. The production doesn't help a great deal as it sounds like a demo from 1990. One of the problems with relying so much on a sound from the past is that you really have to add something of your own to make it interesting. This band do not add much of anything to this old sound. In fact they do not even play A list early death metal. This would have been forgettable grade "B" fodder at best if it had been trotted out twenty years ago. To me good death metal needs to be heavy, fast, aggressive and have a few twists and turns. The Seven Gates don't really excel at any of those categories. They just clunk along and although they hit on a few sparks they just never put enough parts together to show any kind of consistency. In the end "Angel of suffering" just doesn't do enough to warrant anyone's attention. It was quite honestly very difficult to make it through the whole disc. There are just a lot of other bands doing this style a lot better than The Seven Gates.