"The Cold Asylum", is a quite neat album released by the German DIVINE:ZERO.

The band itself exists since 2004, a decade! At Least this is what written on their Facebook page, they have a very nice history as a hard working band, first debut album in 2008, which I had a huge curiosity for, it's a shame that they have a few traces of this album, from only two songs that you may find on YouTube, "The Day God Left" is a very well done and sounds promising album, if I would find this album online I might spend some money on it.

What I'm trying to say is "The Day God Left" maybe better album than "The Cold Asylum", for me. As an old school, and a huge death metal fan, the produced sound has a humongous impact on how music conquers my heart beside the composition itself. In the composition area "The Day God Left" wins my heart, a melodic Death metal, heavy sweeping rhythms along with nice melodic parts, the sound is old school, by the book, as I want to hear it. In the other hand, "The Cold Asylum" has a neat composition, neat in a meaning of Death metal is the satisfaction you get from the first song, the "Blood Pounding", as it opens with a massive intro , and it continues to please your ears with heavy music with melodic parts for the rest of the album, by the book! As you should like it! Everything is in its place as it should be and it's delicious!

The general sound, as an old school person, the modern sound of this album is a bit disturbing for me. And I could expect more perfection from a signed up in a label, professional band. The drums sound could get better, the snare is a bit hollow, too sharp and in most of the songs is very standing out, the base drum is too far away, and you have to put an effort to hear it.

In the 6th track, "AWAKE" the drums opening is very sharp and grating to the ear, in general, AWAKE has suddenly a very dominant drums, especially the snare. I might think that a little more mixing could fix this. Maybe DIVINE:ZERO made the "The Cold Asylum" deliberately like that, to make it sound more modern.

Speaking of modern, Here and there you can catch a few Hard Core elements, it's very delicate to call it that way, because it is a pure Death Metal album, I cannot get the feeling that those elements had put there intentionally to try sound more "core". But maybe to modernize the album a little bit more, to make it pleasant to the younger ear. It doesn't bother me at all, surprisingly, it even makes me to like it more.

The "Orison In Lead", 4th track opens with a famous "INCOMING" battle shouts and gunshots, a classic Death metal song, but expected to be faster and brutal for a war song, but it has its moments, great song! The "Deathroll Pentecost" has an unusual opening comparing to the rest of the songs, the main riff is jolly, but still a very energetic and fun song. All the other songs I didn't put my finger on because they sounds more and less like every other song in the album, just to fill up the timing space. They are still individually very good songs, it was enjoyable to hear them.

The bottom line is that you should give it a try if you are a Death metal fan, especially a melodic death metal.

To pass the fact that I have very selective ears and small things bother me, I can truly say that "The Cold Asylum" is a good album, comes from a hard work of an awesome band DIVINE:ZERO.