“Come Death” promises so many things, but ends up failing to accomplish even the most basic ones; the songs have a certain groove that almost, almost made them memorable, a technical approach that does elevate the general sound but that doesn’t play well as a whole, and a death style that lacks either of speed or aggressiveness; maybe on their next release these Norwegians will get their act together… but wait they already have! Back in 2005 Blood Red Throne did all that with “Altered Genesis”; the songs had groove and anger; the riffs reached technical levels but remain grounded with the rest of the album and helped layered the production with groove, hooks and technical notes… so what the hell happened? “Come Death” sounds like an album they should have released prior to “Altered Genesis”, because all the ideas are the same is just that “Come Death” draws it feet when it needs to be running.

Perhaps without having listen to that great 2005 record, this album wouldn’t have sounded that bad, and by all means “Come Death” is not a bad album, not a bad album for some other band that hasn’t release a similar one that pretty much gets everything right.

In defense of the band they did loose their previous singer Mr. Hustler and Bernt A Moen in the drums, but if the album lacked on those two segments we will know who to blame, but that wasn’t the case, the new guy in percussion Anders Haave does a pretty decent job, nothing spectacular but he takes care of his side, while Vald doesn’t have those deep, growls that Hustler had, but still those are not the reasons why the album doesn’t manages to take off, and sadly it sounds like the guys just lost interest in this style of playing death metal, perhaps they are even bored with it, and decided to just record another, that may sound a bit like the previous one but this time around with no heart invested in it.

If you have never heard another Blood Red Throne album then you are not going to find this as discouraging as it sounds to me, but if you had the chance to hear “Altered Genesis” you will be disappointed.