Catastrophic
The Cleansing
Metal Blade
He of the post-Great Night Out bug-eyes, Trevor Peres returns to the death-metal fold, after Obituary folded a few years back, with the aptly named Catastrophic. Uh•perhaps not so aptly named, as Peres’ newest quintet (comprising ex-members of Pyrexia) basically goes through the motions despite the inherent violence involved, as something about The Cleansing strikes this writer as kinda stale in a none-too-nostalgic pre-Swedish-‘92-boom way despite all the advances made to death metal in the past decade and, more so, despite all the great “retro” posturers slumming about. Dunno, really: Peres is in fine form here, but what else would you expect from one of the forefathers of the death-metal rhythm guitar? Seriously, Catastrophic’s debut is hardly the “forget about Obituary” shot to death metal’s arm like Metal Blade would have you mistakenly believe, and matters are only made worse by some of the most ridiculously triggered blastbeats around (and not even in a good way • see Morbid Angel’s recent Gateways to Annihilation). Call Catastrophic the carbon-copy Obituary for kids too young to know who Obituary was, but I’d (rather accurately) call it tepid and boring.
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