Lay Down Rotten – “Gospel Of The Wretched”

Gospel Of The Wretched is the latest release for Metal Blade act Lay Down Rotten and man is this one hell of a CD. Every song is well constructed, and heavy as hell. The band has managed to successfully combine numerous musical styles with a terrific final outcome. Thrash Metal, Death Metal and even some melodic Metal all flawlessly blend together to form a compilation of heavy-as-shit tunes that should appeal to a large portion of the Metal Community. The music is quite aggressive with heavy rhythm guitars roiling away while a cleaner lead guitar shreds the frets with reckless abandon. Add in the throaty snarls of the vocalist and what you have is a fierce and visceral battering that any fan of modern metal should enjoy.

Two tracks stand out to me as being highlights. The first is “Conditioning The Weak,” for the aforementioned reason; the heavy guitars are accented with some expert, tasteful lead playing; (I really love the intro to this tune). The second song and the one I believe sets this band apart from many others out there is “Gospel Of The Wretched,” which is a balls to the wall metal tune that works off of a terrific opening riff.

I feel that the overall production is quite stellar as well, everything is big and crunchy the way I think a good Death Metal album should be. I dig Gospel Of The Wretched and I give them props for what I believe is a very good CD and one that I would advocate without any qualms.

Track Listing:

01. Gospel Of The Wretched
02. Thy Won’t Be Done
03. Hours Of Infinity
04. Altering The Whore
05. Conditioning The Weak
06. He Who Sows Hate
07. Beyond Damnation
08. When All Becomes Nothing
09. Where Spirits Lie Dead

Run Time: 44:25