Review by David on March 13, 2005.

Descent Into Chaos is certainly a wolf among the sheep. Perhaps leaning a bit more towards neo-thrash than one would necessarily expect, the base-level aggressive plundering of Nightrage is perhaps suited to get the best out of a certain Swedish Lindberg (vocals), or "Mr. T" to us mere mortals.

Conveyed through the clean-and-cutting production, there’s something about the guitar work on this one: something altogether more satisfying than the remnants of the disowned melodic death scene. There’s a certain edginess - nothing particularly radical - and a possessed feeling to the incendiary opener “Being Nothing”, and then there’s the mildly In Flames-ian “Silent Solitude” with its cheap-shot chord progressions ready to snare you. Yes… we know your game.

Mr. T sounds in top form; his wretched, tortured howls are as crazed and raging as he’s been in a while. Maybe it’s because this is home territory and what we expect of him, but here his presence is more defined and energising. With fresh-sounding, fluid guitar solos and snappy, spirited drumming in the mix you’re never in danger of looking at the posters on the wall and wondering: how can so many people be so wrong about a fine show like Futurama?

Could have done without the instrumental track, “Solus”; three minutes of tacked on sleepwalking that somehow ended up at the bottom of the barrel. Then there’s “Jubilant Cry” which lacks the professed joyfulness, sounding more like the song that got kicked off the college team because it refused to take the steroids being pushed by the coach. It then got pulverised by its ex-team mates. Yeah it got beat real good. So the irrelevance snuck its way in, bound to happen at some point.

For me the question is how come Exhumation never sounded this interesting? Maybe it was their complacency, but Marios (guitars) has obviously met a match with his current writing partners. It took a guy from Dream Evil to do it? Well, I guess it takes all sorts. Some order restored then.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 9
Atmosphere: 8
Production: 10
Originality: 7
Overall: 8

Rating: 8.4 out of 10