It is not a secret; it has never been actually, maybe just a means to frighten others. Largely stated rather bluntly over the years, but our demise is pending, this time, hurdling another version of our death, by a deadly virus. Plenty of movies about were produced; lots of zombie flicks and illiterate B-Sides skirmishes were inflicted upon the public to stretch the boundaries of imagination. The German CREMATORY probably didn't have to undergo brainstorming in order to come up with the theme, yet their Industrial / Gothic Metal manner, which has been developed over the years, contributed to a futuristic horror world thrown right in the face evaluating by their tracklist of their new album, "Antiserum", via SPV / Steamhammer Records. Definitely, judging by this album in general, this is not the CREMATORY I used to know and admire; devoted to indulge Death Metal with their Gothic presence, yet at least I am grateful that these guys haven't really lost their touch in getting right through the punch lines.

In comparison to earlier releases that emphasized the downfall of the Death Metal elements of the band's music, for example "Awake", "Act Seven", "Believe" and even "Revolution", which was back in the day the second album of CREMATORY that I got to know, this new release accentuates the marginal process of the iron welding Industrial revelation of CREMATORY, laying down the lines in a closer proximity to RAMMSTEIN or DEATHSTARS or even a part time DJ SKAZI rather than their older image, which was much preferable by yours truly. The album's songwriting presents formulations of Pop at the most, getting right there to the punch lines, a chorus usually combining heavily low end growls along and clean vocals. Other than that, the image remained practically the same all throughout each and every one of the songs, other than the intro; nothing really varies, like a repetition with different sartorial. I guess that the band's musical ideas would be perceived as pretty obvious, however, CREMATORY maintained a fine standard on producing catchy tunes, filled with a heavy and thick blackened Metallic negativity prolonging a slow demise, in an emotional kind of way, spreading the drama all over the place with great vocals and groovy rhythms, as elegant as always.

The title track, "Antiserum" and "Irony Of Fate" are the album's highly expressed tracks in terms of music, former being somewhat melodic with its guitaring, there is a slight reminder of the early 00's stuff, like dreadful hymns, on a positive note, smudged by utter bitterness, yet quite magical. "If You Believe" and "Inside Your Eyes", insinuating the duo lingual German meets English combo of lyrics, nice tune to it, catchy tunes following the band's tradition, not that brilliant music wise, but for a reason there I didn't care that much as even if this formula has been suffocated for quite a while. The emotional ends, though with a bit of frostiness, paved under a fine greyish foundation of simple implanted Industrial Goth. Closing this down, I expected a bit more out of this album as CREMATORY has been delivering heart throbbing tunes for a vast period of time, and I believe that they are a bit stuck in the Pop monograms way too much, and a fresh perspective is urgently needed.