If you reduce Epitaph to only 5 tracks, it’s impact within death metal will be much more welcomed than if you managed to go through it’s 11 “groove” based death metal, that despite been fun and catchy, tends to repeat the same formula over, and over and over and over again.

Epitaph, is definitely a fun record to listen, drawing many influences from bands such as Six Feet Under, Debauchery (that sounds pretty much like SFU and one of TFP was a former member of such band so you can pretty much see where this is going) and if you pay enough attention some Entombed is thrown into the mix as the songs only differentiate one another in speed but not in shape. Thy Final Pain plays that catchy, groovy, melodic, yet heavy and brutal death metal made famous by the Stockholm metal scene and enhanced by some US bands; this is as close as death metal comes in colliding with his now not very popular Gothenburg mellow death cousin.

TFP sounds like Evocation but with a lot of rpm’s stripped from their death assault, something that really diminishes the impact their nice riffs can make on the listener plus you add a somehow thing drum that would have sounded “devastating” if the production would have allow it to be louder and thicker, but since this is an independent production I can honestly say that these Germans did a hell of a job, without having a big label backing them, but their sound is there and their riffs are quite remarkable and memorable, something hard to find these days.

So despite all my objections Epitaph is a good record, maybe a bit too long for the formula used here, and the lack of tangible variation between songs, but nonetheless a solid death metal record.