SADIST

The year 1993. That's exactly where I'll begin this review, because there's a fundamental point here — the release year. This was the year CYNIC released "Focus," ATHEIST recorded their third and final album "Elements," and DEATH put out "Individual Thought Patterns." What all these releases share is their belonging to the progressive death genre. It should be noted that progressive death and technical death are different things — the former necessarily draws on prog-rock traditions. In that sense, SADIST's debut cannot be called progressive. This is technical death with atmospheric keyboards, roughly in the same style as NOCTURNUS, hailing from the cradle of American death metal — Tampa, Florida — were playing at the time. "Above The Light" consists of 10 tracks featuring brilliant guitar work, both in riffing and solos, a rather secondary bass guitar, interesting keyboards, fairly simple drumming for death metal even without the "technical" prefix, and completely unremarkable vocals. However, vocals are clearly not the main attraction here, nor are the lyrics, which upon reading lead to just one conclusion — the guys simply had a poor command of English. The instrumental side, specifically the interplay between guitar and keyboards, is the foundation of this disc, and it succeeds brilliantly in every respect. But overall, the compositional aspect could have used more work; saying the disc flows effortlessly from start to finish is, unfortunately, not possible — the material feels somewhat unbalanced as a whole. The reissue also includes two compositions from the year 2000. This is death metal — the clarification is not accidental, because that year SADIST released "Lego," a nu-metal disc that became the biggest failure in their history. The audience completely rejected an album with a sound reminiscent of KORN from a band that had previously played technical death metal. Even the rather original moves and combinations used in its compositions couldn't save the disc. It turns out that in that same year they also recorded "normal" compositions in a more familiar format. In the first track, the vocal line is reasonably interesting and the guitar work is beyond reproach, but overall it sounds dull and bland. As for the second — it's essentially metalcore, albeit with solos and keyboards...