TRAUMA is a 3-Piece Death Metal band from Elblag, Poland. They have been at it since 1992 and this is their first album since ''Karma Obscura'' that came out back in 2013. They were used to be known as THANATOS back in the late eighties and early nineties. They are not to be confused with countless bands with the same band name throughout the world!

They are following in the footsteps of a long line of Polish Death Metal bands like BEHEMOTH, VADER, DECAPITATED amongst countless others. Those are tough acts to follow and they did a good job no less. They are more Technical than I previously anticipated honestly. I loved the tempo changes and the guitar work on ''Astral Misanthropy'' and I felt it showed another side of the band. They are relatively unknown nonetheless and hopefully won't be overshadowed by the other bands from Poland.

I personally don't think they stood out that much even though the band is exceptionally tight and controlled and that drumming is the just the driving force behind the album. You have the standard guttural vocals but they did not get on my nerves at all and I felt they weren't buried in the fix and that's fine by me. The vocals take up a huge space in the songs but it doesn't deter from anything else on the album. I highly enjoyed ''Colossus'' and ''The Black Maggots'' as well though the rest of the album is give or take, it has a mix of slower chugging pieces and primal bursts like something CANNIBAL CORPSE would do in their last few albums.

The production is definitely highly polished and all notes are cleanly executed and the various instruments balanced off well the guttural vocals. If you compare them to a number of bands of the over-saturated genre, they seem to lack any form of real identity that can bring them into the same light. This is a good album yet unspectacular in the genre and it tends to get lost in the shuffle due to redundancy in some of the songs. I mean some songs are interchangeable and you wouldn't notice. It never really comes together but it's still an enjoyable ride no less.