HORRID (it) - As We Forgot Our Past - CD

Italy's longest-running death metal band, HORRID have built an enviously dependable, unyielding body of work since 1989. Starting with more primitive influences but soon moving on to those of early Entombed and Dismember, the band spent the 1990s solidifying their sound over a clutch of demos and EPs. Eventually, come 2002, their debut album manifested itself as Reborn in Sin. From there, the name HORRID has continued to stand for the timeless upholding of classic death metal values.

 

Fittingly titled As We Forget Our Past, the 10-song/53 album features a slew of "greatest hits" re-recorded with HORRID's lineup that's been firm since 2015. As such, these ten tracks together form a sort of symbiosis with the preceding Beyond the Dark Border, given the massive crunch & crush of that career highpoint. With the original songs stretching back to 1997's Blasphemic Creatures and ranging 2002's Reborn in Sin, 2006's Rising From the Hidden Spheres, 2011's The Final Massacre, and even Sacrilegious Fornication, here do HORRID put on a masterclass of pure 'n' proud DEATH METAL: melodic yet dark, dynamic yet devastating, the power-trio bring the past into the present with seemingly effortless aplomb. Despite the usually tawdry proposition of most re-recordings, truly does As We Forget Our Past both re-acclimate and re-animate, this lineup of HORRID's executing these old creations with a palpitating breathlessness and goosebump-inducing poignancy, especially where the lead-guitar work is concerned. Suitably, the band round out the record with a brand-new song, the title track "As We Forget Our Past," bring that past into the present and setting their sights on the future.