Serpentine Dominion

Serpentine Dominion

Ladies  and gentlemen, do I have a f***ing beautiful treat in store for you today, […]
By Gabriel "Svrtr" Zimmerman
April 30, 2017
Timo Tolkki's Avalon - Return to Eden album cover

Ladies  and gentlemen, do I have a f***ing beautiful treat in store for you today, for today I get to present the extreme melo death love child of Adam Dutkiewicz (KILLSWITCH ENGAGE), Shannon Lucas (ex- THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER), and the man with the mighty neck George "Corspsegrinder" Fisher (CANNIBAL CORPSE, PATHS OF POSSESSION), and their little love child is a blood-red seeing rage fueled killer. In short, today I get to present SERPENTINE DOMINION and their very first release Serpentine Dominion. Due to the sheer incredible-ness of this album, Ill just jump right in. Normally I would simply jump to the first song and pass up intros, but in this case I feel it would be wrong to skip the intro here. Even then, with the brevity of the other songs, the nearly two minute intro almost lasts as long as the shorter songs.

Opening with a simple yet effective acoustic riff, the intro does not take long to dive into an incredible beat with great tempo and does extremely well to make you become unable to hear what is to come. Thus the first song on the album is "The Vengeance in Me", and it certainly does not take its time as it blasts you full on from the first second. Though lacking in the melody of the intro, it makes up for it with the beat and brutality that it provides. With incredible riffs, an amazing and gut ripping solo, great riffs, and incredible vocal work, there is very little to fault with this song. Following this is "Vanquished Unto Thee", which opts to return to a more melodic focus while retaining the brutality of the previous track. However, it is the chorus and incredible guitar work throughout that I must give praise for. Some might find an aversion to the clean vocals in the chorus, however I cannot fault their placement or usage as the way it was done very much adds to the song. Meanwhile, in "Divide, Conquer, Burn, and Destroy" the prominence of the guitar is dialed back, however in a good way as it allows the sum to be greater than the parts and allows the song to shine in how well everything comes together. Next on the list of songs I will mention "Jagged Cross Legions" for its incredible progression through the song and the central melodic riff that the song is structured around, for not mentioning them would be a disservice. I would highly recommend anyone listening to this album check out this song, and especially pay attention to the guitar work throughout in every incarnation of it in the song, as I am certain you will not be disappointed. Finally the album closes with "Prelude" and "This Endless War" which I will talk about together. As in the intro, the prelude includes about two and a half minutes of incredible acoustic guitar work that leads right into the opening of "This Endless War", moving towards the same riff as it opens. It soon after switches to a far more standard death metal beat for the first verse, and when the chorus comes you get to experience what I consider to be the best riffs and drum work on the album.

It is the choruses like this that make SERPENTINE DOMINION extreme melodic death metal. Sometimes the term "Supergroup" gets thrown around, however I feel that there isn't a better term here. The band has it all. Unique tracks, incredible technical work, great vocals, great progression, and seemingly perfect chemistry in the band. This is certainly one of my favorite releases of 2016 and I would highly recommend this album to anyone, and keep on the lookout for more from this band as I sure as hell will. "The overall message of the album is that we are living in hard times and there are gonna be more hard times in the future, obviously, but we wanna bring people together and show them that there is so much goodness in humanity that we can come together and be brothers, no matter what..."

10 / 10

Masterpiece

Songwriting

9

Musicianship

9

Memorability

10

Production

10
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"Serpentine Dominion" Track-listing:

1. Intro
2. The Vengeance in Me
3. Vanquished Unto Thee
4. Divide, Conquer, Burn, and Destroy
5. Sovereign Hate
6. On the Brink of Devastation
7. Jagged Cross Legions
8. Prelude
9. This Endless War

Serpentine Dominion Lineup:

Shannon Lucas - Drums
George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher - Vocals
Adam Dutkiewicz - Guitar, Bass, Vocals

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