Review by Michael on February 6, 2022.

After their very appealing EP Voices in 2020 which I highly appreciated the quartet hailing from Belgium will finally release their first full-length album Recollections Of The Insane in February. While you could hear some good old-school thrash with slight death metal influences on the EP, the guys must have experienced some very bad things in the last two years because now they sound much more aggressive than on Voices.

First of all, the guitar work is much more death metal based – they are tuned down and you cannot find those Demolition Hammer or Sepultura-like riffs anymore. They sound much more like some guys originated in Florida (I won't do any malevolent name creations here though) and I have to say that I didn't expect such a change. Vocalist Ricky Mandozzi is shouting in the same way as he did on Voices though, but he sounds much more aggressive and a lot fresher. He uses more "Uuuugh"-shouting so that my impression that they want to go more into death metal is strengthened, too. They left the path of playing very groovy catchy parts most of the time but increased the tempo and are really blasting through their tracks. Okay, here and there you still have the nice thrashy parts like in 'Sea Of Sorrow' but most of the time it is just a death metal onslaught.

I have to confess that it took me some time to get into this new direction of Schizophrenia but after some listening to Recollections Of The Insane I have to admit that I like this album very much. I would compare their career to the guys from Skeletal Remains who became more and more uncompromising with each album. The production is really well done, a very clear sound with well-balanced bass tunes and I would say that this is exactly the rich production a death metal album needs. The most outstanding tracks in my opinion are 'Fall Of The Damned' which starts with a very dark intro and convinces with nice breaks and some hellish speed in the middle part of it, 'Cranial Disintegration' because it has some very catchy parts and a really great solo in it and the already mentioned 'Sea Of Sorrow'. 'Onwards Into Fire' and 'Souls Of Retribution' show a more technical skilled side of the band, especially 'SOR' gets me back to the early 90s atheistic feelings I had back then. The brutality is still to find in those songs, but they have decreased the tempo at some point.

I would really like to recommend this album to you if you like old-school death metal without any knickknack. If you liked their first EP you may be surprised about the differences but you should give it a chance nevertheless! It's one of these albums that grow with the time!

Rating: 8.9 out of 10 Belgian chocolates