Listening to Decapitated stirs interesting memories and images that stumble through my mind, most of which are blurry and non-descript. Overall it conjures thoughts of never having seen them in what I would regard as their musical heyday in the early 00s, and how their return to the stage after the death of Witold "Vitek" Kiełtyka and the career ending injuries to Adrian "Covan" Kowanek triumphantly announced that they would carry on, but no one wants to admit how different things evolved after such a tragic accident. The talent of those two men, especially Vitek, being so integral to the shape of their destiny could not help influence their sound and the way they are perceived for years to come.
As an early adopter of the band, I knew there was incredible talent fueling their force. When the singer swap happened early and Wojciech "Sauron" Wąsowicz made the move eventually to Masachist, many of us thought they might not recover well, yet seemed to bounce back into Organic Halucinosis with Covan wielding the mic with enough power to convert even the most diehard fan. With the decision to carry on past their tremendous loss, Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka, brother of Vitek and only remaining original member of the band, chose to defy the odds remaking a band that bore so much influence in their decade plus of existence when he reinstated them in 2009.
While their first release post-tragedy, Carnival is Forever, it felt like they had not quite figured out who they were going to be, just trying to repeat or reestablish their footing. Blood Mantra feels like the new beginning they searched for in their last album. The driving nightmare of Nihility and Winds of Creation have given way to a subtle shift and adoption of tones and tempos that were underpinnings of their early songwriting, but never rang out the way they have done on this record.
Flirting with tempos and atmospheric soundscapes can make for an intro track or something, but massaging these ideas into a tight tech death structure could potentially throw everything for a loop and wind up a bloody mess on the floor, but somehow it feels natural. The bulk of the surprising jams happen toward the latter half of the record, songs like “Blindness” and “Instinct” seem somewhat out of character, yet after the brutalization left behind from “The Blasphemous Psalm…” and “Veins” the pacing works to their advantage.
For those looking for a replay of the early years, Blood Mantra definitely doesn’t satisfy in that way; Rafał "Rasta" Piotrowski's vocals still feel more akin to their Gothenburg cousins rather than their death metal roots. Rasta is shaping up nicely though, with a deeper and more aggressive quality to his snarl than the last record. Vocalists may be the only ones who get this; he sings from his teeth not his throat, and though no one had the perfect double kick of Vitek, the latest addition to the band, Michał Łysejko on the skins, does a great job working in the Decapitated framing while making it his own.
The unfortunate truth, Blood Mantra has some really great moments on it – songwriting and quality are above par in the genre right now – but I still feel like I am listening to a band who really loved the idea of Decapitated, taking pieces of what they had done and started to shape something of their own out of it… which wouldn’t be weird if it wasn’t the band themselves. The impossibility of retaining or regaining what was possessed before the accident will forever weigh on the name. I enjoyed Blood Mantra, but cannot help envision what it might sound like if their path remained unscathed.
Stream the entire Decapitated album Blood Mantra here.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/sbLSrdNd9oU[/youtube]
