Band: Supreme Pain
Title: Divine Incarnation
Label: Massacre Records
Distribution: Suburban
Release date: May 27th 2011
Review: CD

Supreme Pain, hailing from Holland, were formed in 2006 by guitar player Erwin Harreman (until then an unknown entity to me) and two Metal-veterans: drummer Robi Kovacic, known from Scaffold (the Slovenian one), FondleCorpse, Necrosed or his session assistance with Belphegor (amongst a handful of other bands and projects), and, last but not least, one of the Netherlands’ best known grunters, Aad Kloosterwaard (think Sinister, Infinited Hate / Weapons To Hunt, Monastery, Blastcorps, Thanatos, Houwitser etc.). After some rehearsing, the trio recorded a more-than-acceptable promo-CD, entitled Lifeless Skin And Bones, which drew attention of Steve Green, involved with Atrocious Abnormality or Lust Of Decay, and the guy behind Comatose Music (with sweet combos like Ingurgitate, Human Artifacts, Malebolgia, Aversion To Life or Domination Through Impurity on its rooster). Result: the debut Cadaver Pleasures, one of Holland’s strongest albums from 2008. The album was recorded with new member Bas Brussaard, Aad’s colleague in e.g. Infinited Hate (now: Weapons To Hunt) and Robi’s colleague in FondleCorpse (and involved with Absurd Universe as well). The intention was to contribute as guest guitar player, doing some solos, yet it seemed to work out extremely well, so Bas joined the horde as permanent member.
Some line-up changes followed. Robi left and was replaced pretty soon after by Toep Duin, known from acts like Unlord, Putrefied, Blastcorps, Cardinal or Consolation, and the band recruited Tadej Cholewa, also involved with Slovenian Scaffold, as bass player. In 2009, this collective recorded and released the second album, Nemesis Enforcer (Metal Age Productions). However, the distance between Slovenia and Holland turned out to be a problem, so Tadej left and got replaced by Alesa Sare. Toep as well decided to concentrate on other things, so one of Holland’s best drummers joined forces: Paul Beltman, also in, for example, Blastcorps and formerly in Sinister, session player for e.g. FondleCorpse and Infinited Hate, and besides all these acts, involved as well with bands like Judgement Day and Scrotum. Around this period, Supreme Pain signed to Massacre Records and for the second time, they entered the famous Soundlodge Studio with producer Jörg Uken (Sinister, Izegrim, Mephistopheles, The Seventh, God Dethroned a.m.m.) to record the third official studio album. Divine Incarnation is it called, this newest Death Metal Monster, and it brings more than three quarters of an hour of supreme and painful fury and sickness.
Divine Incarnation opens very promising with Dawn Of A New Era, a short instrumental guitar-piece, but it gets even more promising as from the opening blaster The Dark Army on. This is material in the vein of the members’ other outfits, comparable in heaviness and brutality. The rhythmic songs are mainly fast, spiced up with fierce guitar solos, a massive bass and electric guitar sound (within the slower pieces, Bolt Thrower is a name that come to mind more than once), forceful drum patterns and deep, guttural grunts. The compositions are not reinventing the scene, nor are they creating new dimensions. But this lack of originality is completely inferior, because of both the nice performing quality and the fact that the major part of the other combos the members are involved with belong to the higher regions of the Extreme Metal scene too.
Recommended to fans of several other bands the guys were / are part of (Houwitser, Sinister etc.), as well as Polish (Vader, Behemoth, Yattering) and American (Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Suffocation) colleagues.

75/100

Ivan Tibos.