Overall Rating: 8.3

Country: Germany

Release Date: 2008

Record Label: Suffer Productions

Track list:
1. Ain't No Ordinary Brutality (Intro)
2. The Scent Of Faded Memories
3. Howling At My Backdoor Pt. 2
4. Wipe You Off Life's Page
5. Modertau
6. Artefacted Irreligion (Benediction cover)
7. Manifesto Of The Weird
8. On The Edge
9. Leech
10. Fallen From Grace
11. In The End...Unknowing
12. Oscar's Job (Outro)

Band Website: Depression

Country: Sweden

Track list:
13. This Place Is Rot
14. Abortion Van
15. Gasmask Obsession
16. Hell Is Already Here
17. Grinded And Exiled v1.0
18. Flashnaut v1.0
19. N.Y.Ripper
20. Untitled 1
21. Untitled 2
22. Untitled 3

Band Website: Paganizer

Depression - Unglaube

Marc Miekeley - Vocals, bass
Ron Sanders - Vocals
Kai Sattelkau - Drums, Guitar, Bass, Vocals

Depression. What kind of music do you think a band with a name like that would play? Take a look at their artwork and logo and tell me again. You're still wrong. Completely contradicting their image, this underappreciated but prolific old German band plays Death/Grind music. I was fooled the same way some years back when I had bought their first full length album, Chronische Depression. Studying the additional information provided in its thick booklet, it became apparent that they have been fooling people like this since years with every release that they have put out.

Combining old school death metal with grindcore/crust music and having developed and perfected this sound over the years, Depression's music is not easy to describe. The constantly fluctuating proportion of their death/grind mix makes the task even harder but nevertheless more interesting for the listener; and if you were to put a gun to my head and ask me, I would then unhesitatingly liken it to the music of Blood even without them having as prominent death metal influences in their music as Depression. Displaying amazing skill and dexterity, the band members smoothly switch the music from a lumbering old school death metal segment to a relieved upbeat grind/crust section and even manage to make it appear like a natural progression of that song. Occasionally they infuse Dead-esque jaunty grooves into their compositions and also dirgeful parts which some crust/hardcore bands such as Misery and Remains of the Day tend to play. Highlights are plentiful and with their songs being remarkably well structured and varied for this kind of music, each one of them could be happily described by me in detail but that would be superfluous in a split review.

All the three members of Depression do vocals and each one of them does so differently. There is in fact a font code provided in the booklet so that the listener can come to know exactly which one of them is doing vocals at a given point. They are delightful and comprises deep hoarse growls, nasty grunts, Jeff Walker rasps and even Macabre-like exasperated shrieks and wails. Check out their performance in the excellent song “Leech” where the vocalist (Ron) screams out the words “Liar! Liar!” with such contempt and conviction that if you were a part of the jury, you would give the accused a death sentence right away. The production is top-notch; robust, balanced and sufficiently retaining the rawness of tone, it is the best one this band has had from my experience.

To all those ignorant bums who have been hopelessly waiting for a band that would one day successfully merge the best elements of their favourite extreme metal genres, wipe away your tears now, for Depression will make your fantasies come true. Okay, so that doesn't exactly leave them with an original sound, but what the fuck, their music is solid, vigorous, impassioned and somewhat even refreshing because rarely is a band so good at this. With Depression having over 30 minutes of playing time, this split is worth buying for them alone.

Paganizer - Split Wide Open

Rogga - Vocals, Guitars
Patrik - Bass
Fiebig - Drums

Any respectable death metalhead with his head not tucked into his ass like this would know of Paganizer. They have been consistently producing ballsy and agreeable music over the years. Straight up no-frills old school death metal served in a slightly modern style, their music sounds like a cross between Entombed on Clandestine and Grave circa ...And Here I Die...Satisfied with maybe a tinge of Bolt Thrower. Anyone will start cheering to their music.

And that is exactly what happens when you listen to their massively heavy groove-laden opening song, “The Place is Rot”. You can't help but jerkily nod your head in full agreement to their ‘right' music as you think about the fact that Paganizer's music doesn't really need to evolve or sound original. They sound fucking good just as they are. Then “Abortion Van” is a short song featuring a great compelling groove segment in the middle. After that “Gasmask Obsession” explodes out of your speakers with crazy energy and enthusiasm in the trademark manner of Grave/Bolt Thrower, and that spirit is maintained throughout the next song as well. Varying production of the songs makes you realise that not all of them are newly recorded, and as a matter of fact, the last couple of songs described above are taken from their Chapel of Blood split with Eroded. The next couple of songs kick your sore ass about just the same even with their diminished sound quality, and then you are left with three untitled songs of an even lower quality, of which at least one I suspect to be a cover though I can't quite put my finger on it.

Despite the bothersome sound inconsistency, Split Wide Open remains an enjoyable release and is a good reminder of how powerful this band can be. Paganizer have a new release coming out this year and after listening to this one, I sure as shit am charged up for it.

Without doubt this is one of the best split releases of 2008. It has 50 minutes of high quality music, a 12-sided booklet with two separate artworks, a cool video from each band, and both of them complement each other on this split.

July 20th, 2008