This is the third full-length album from Wersterstede, Germany trio.

You gotta love those Death Metal album covers! It is very reminiscent of old school horror movie pictures, it's macabre but it has style and substance. I thought it looked like some of the great album covers from bands like POSSESSED or AUTOPSY back in the early days of Death Metal. For me album covers are like works of art, some artist have done some awesome stuff for bands throughout the history of modern music. Germany has brought us a lot of bands from various genres, especially in Metal the last 20-25 years. Though in all my years of listening to Metal, I think it's the first time I come across a Death Metal band from this part of the world. It did not disappoint!

You gotta love the name of the guys in the band, a true homage to their predecessors that wanted evil names instead of the boring reality of their real names! I'd say in the last decade, most of newer Death Metal bands were straying from the path of their roots and ancestors in the genre. The production value has been so much better and as for the genre itself, well most bands are leaning towards more technical wizardry than anything else. Most bands are trying to incorporate as much stuff as they can to differentiate themselves from the forefathers of Death Metal.

Well GRAVEYARD GHOUL does the polar opposite. Their sound is raw, the production value is fine but you can hear the scrapes and dings from the drum set throughout the album. The instruments are not filtered unto a computer and then remade so everything sounds perfect, far from it. The music is raw, the energy is at the forefront of the album. It sounds like it was recorded in the early nineties in the heyday of the genre. Make no bones about it, it won't break any records on originality nonetheless. This is a perfect example of a band that wants to pay homage to a genre that has been watered down throughout the last decade. They do incorporate some semblance of Thrash Metal on a number of songs mainly the opener, ''Mouldered to Madness'', you can definitely detect that type of intensity. It's buried deep inside of some of the songs on the album but I can feel that type of energy, that insanity that Thrash Metal brought to the table back in the day.

I've listened to this album more than once on my way to work and it's safe to say that I would really compare these guys to the first few albums by SEPULTURA. Not the SEPULTURA that began incorporating tribal sounds and whatnot, but the pure aggression that they put out in the first few albums. Like SEPULTURA, these guys are still very young (in life and in their music career), their compositions don't have the most original lyrical themes but we will see with the releases in the future. They talk about the dead, dismemberment and dis-figuration, nothing we haven't heard before by bands like CANNIBAL CORPSE! I don't really mind that much to be honest, you don't hear the lyrics that much so you tend to lean towards the meaning of the song titles, let's just say they are some pretty sweet titles on this one!

Most songs follow the same path of old school Death Metal and it doesn't get boring even after 5-6 songs, they try to keep it intense and it doesn't let you out of their grasp in a matter of speaking. It may not be the most original of bands but what they bring is pure aggression and a nod to the old school goodness of early Death Metal. They keep it real and they don't push any boundaries than they should. A very strong release from these guys!