Band : Deus Inversus
Album title : Mastery Over The World
Label : Nihilistic Empire Records
Distributor : /
Release date : 17/09/2010
Release : CD

Of the Death Metal releases the editor-in-chief passed onto me for review (while we were waiting for our specialist colleague to resurface into activity), I enjoyed this one probably as much as the older mini-album by Quest Of Aidance. You see, stylistically DI incorporate a nice portion of Progressive Heavy Metal and technicality into their music!

The Essen & Witten (that's in the Nordrhein-Westfalen area) based German band has apparently been around since 1999, and have in that time undergone only two line-up changes, making the current one consisting of singer/ bassist Dmitriy Levin (also of Black Metal act Shining Of Kliffoth, where he's one of two singers), guitarists Dennis “Blaze” Baron (also active in Thrash/ Groove Metal act Final Depravity) & Sergey Marulin, and drummer Sergey Polyanin. Along the way they signed to the small System Shock label, who released the band's 2004 4-track demo The Downfall in CD form as a starter, then issued the 11-track full-length Legion Is Our Name in June 2008. Earlier in 2010 they recorded another 10 tracks, and in July they signed for the release of the album through the freshly started imprint Nihilistic Empire...and thanks to the advances in promotional means and the fact that they have an iPool, they made the album's material available for us to review.

As mentioned earlier, the band plays a Death Metal with Progressive Heavy Metal sensibilities. The technical ability of the guitarists is really nice, and sees 'em going through several modes...sometimes slow and churning, but mostly with mid-paced velocity and nice complexities. On of the guitars regularly plays at the deep end of tonalities, giving the music its darkness. But of course the main darkness comes from Levin's nice deep growl. In the instrumentals the band surprises somewhat. Midway the album you get the acoustic guitar driven (there's also some wacky percussion and extra sounds, making for a distant storm breaking through while the winds are already catching up at your own present place) “Goatpriest” (at least, if I've got the track-listing right, because there's been 2 mix-ups in the iPool download), and for album closer “Into The Abyss” the band used elaborate horns with some sparse electronics and atmospheric keyboards (sounding like a sedate male choir) for a Neo-Classical track that could be compared to the interludes performed by ones such as Nile (except for a non-Egyptian character).

The album comes warmly recommended to fans of Immolation or Morbid Angel, and those among you into those bands (or generally interested in Death Metal with Progressive Heavy Metal backbone) should certainly check out what's posted at myspace.com/deus-inversus (with no less than a total of 9 tracks – 2 off the current album – plus a couple of live videos, you should have enough material to decide either for or against the purchase of this album. Seeing as you've bothered to read on thus far, I'm guessing you'll go for it!

98/100

Tony.