### God Among Insects: Zombienomicon

#### 15/03/06 || Statik Majik

I hope you read my review on God Among Insects’ previous album “World wide death”. If not, I’d recommend doing it right now in order to know what this band is about.

Don’t have the time for that? Well, fuck you too. So here’s a short, but more than accurate, description just for you: downfuckentuned Death Metal. In this case Death Metal is intentionally spelled with capitalized first letters. Because God Among Insects is the essence of Death Metal.

Soundwise this album follows “World wide death” except that the production is a bit better. Somebody buy Tommy Tägtgren a beer or two for the amazing work he did here. Yes, having your album recorded (again) in the legendary Abyss Studios doesn’t obviously do any harm. What differentiates “Zombienomicon” from “World wide death” is that the vocals are mixed a bit higher here. And that is actually a major improvement if you ask me. Now you can hear Caligulas vocals, or should I say “voice”, better, even though the lyric-sheet is still required in order to actually understand what he sings about. Yes, I say “sing”, because his vocals don’t sound like the basic death metal growls at all. It really sounds like he is singing here. Yes, from an extremely low vocal range, but still singing. Except the few times when he pulls off his trademark screams, known from his mainband Dark Funeral. But I consider that just spicing up the soup.

The members of God Among Insects are long-time professionals in the death metal scene, so there’s not much to tell about their performances here. These are members that couldn’t play shitty even if someone forced ‘em to. “Marching into war” proves that the guys don’t necessarily even need a vocalist in order to provide kick ass Death Metal (yes, this tune is an instrumental).

Compared to their previous album, I think here’s an ounce or two more variety in the songs. Not much, because they’re obviously more than satisfied with the formula used on the “World wide death”. In other words: if you’re looking for something new and innovative here, don’t bother. God Among Insects deliver exactly what they claim to: Death fucken Metal. Nothing more, nothing less. And that is definitely enough for me.

Few words about the lyrics… I think people will be surprised to say the least. Emperor Magus Caligula is this time around responsible for all of the lyrics. And he has now totally lost it, to put it mildly. No Christbashing/Satan praising here. Far from it. The whole album is a concept album and the theme is completely about… well, I think the title of the album says enough. The lyrics are written more in a form of a story than 10 individual songs. So the end of the sentences don’t necessarily rhyme with each other, but they’re adjusted to fit the music more than perfectly. Once you get to read the lyric-sheet and listen to the songs, you’ll understand it much better than I could explain without revealing too much of the story itself.

And don’t even get me started with the artwork. It’s butt-ugly, gross, gory… well, you finish the sentence. A fucken zombie feasting on an infant. Material yearning for censorship ( I’m looking at your direction, Ze crazy Germans… ).

Even if I consider this to be slightly better than “World wide death”, I refuse to give it a higher score. You see, 9 is max you’ll ever get from me, and that rating is totally reserved for The Project Hate MCMXCIX albums.

So: 8,5 bashed skulls out of 10 weaklings.

- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: Threeman Recordings
- Website: www.godamonginsects.se
- Band
- Emperor Magus Caligula: vocals
- Lord K. Philipson: guitars
- Tomas Elofsson: bass
- Tobben Gustafsson: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. The first house
- 02. F(wh)oreplay
- 03. Zombie torture
- 04. They came in thousands
- 05. Toth’ Tauun
- 06. Marching into war
- 07. 12th dimension
- 08. Fucked by the dead
- 09. Weaklings
- 10. The bashing of skulls