Government Denies Knowledge (CD - 2006)

Swiss death metal outfit Requiem is not to be confused with the contemporaneous American CCM act, or any of the various third-string metal goth and heavy psych acts that have used this name over the decades without enough popular success to take it off the table. Based on their third album, 2006's Government Denies Knowledge, this Requiem isn't going to be the band to lay definitive claim on the name either. This is utterly ordinary undistinguished death metal, with a grunting vocalist of no particular skill and a drummer that's a level or two beneath the ordinariness of the other musicians, verging toward incompetence. On the title track and elsewhere, the blast beats that are the bread and butter of the death metal drummer are notably poor, neither particularly speedy nor precise, and occasionally throwing the song's entire rhythm track out of whack. Even the most ordinary death metal band demands a certain level of technical competence for its hyperspeed drumming and ultra-tight unison riffing, but Government Denies Knowledge doesn't even provide that basic satisfaction. Add in the band's general lack of inspiration lyrically and musically and this is an album that even the most die-hard, undiscriminating death metal fan is going to have trouble getting behind. ~ Stewart Mason minimize