Being veteran doesn't mean anything if you can't deliver. Trust me that I wasn't the first and I won't be the last to say that. It goes even beyond the music business, but we are here for Metal, which is music by the way for all the corny losers that say otherwise. 2009 was marked as the journey back from the dead of many bands, as every year, but here I will be focusing on the Swedish Death Metal act, SORCERY. This band can't truly be renowned as one of the scene's lions of the sea, yet their earlier releases of the late 80s and early 90s will assuredly help one think that they had something to prove. I can't really ascertain if their disbandment in 1997 made any impact, except from the members themselves that scattered throughout their scene to other bands and projects, but the important thing is that twelve years later they decided to reform, well at least half of the original lineup. Marking their militarized code through the Xtreem Music label, "Arrival At Six" ascended as the band's number two, waiting to unleash hell with every bit of wrath obtainable. But not each comeback is a cause for a banquet, and horridly, "Arrival At Six" made a fine measure of that early remark.

SORCERY's current Death Metal style isn't any different from what all the younger and newcomer bands from Europe has been trying to pull. Though experienced with the Swedish vein of early ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER and moderately with the prior American mutations of OBITURAY and SLAYER along with British indoctrination of BENEDICTION, SORCERY brought themselves into the same straight line of nowadays old school Death Metal, especially the Swedish groups that in a way united with the Dutch incarnation of the genre. Consequently, SORCERY dished their material as a raw chunk of meat, darkened, malevolent, often uncultivated and stained with blood of casualties of war. The band's Death Metal perception is quite basic and their music accordingly while being mixed with Thrash and Doom Metal influences. Nothing too scruffy or that sloppy, just playing it straightforward, in your face kind of destructiveness, plain and to the point. However, as flowing as it ease, pretty much hanging out on the same Metal porch whereas sizzling with bleeding delight, listening to the large majority of "Arrival At Six" felt like striding on smelly mud without the ability to go back from where you came. Nearly every step seemed to be hard, putting out so much effort. Surely that SORCERY hinted with several true commendable songs that implied that they still have it like "Maculated Life", a Death / Thrash travel through grimness relishing onslaught with great main riff and cool chorus section, and the nail biting "Warbringer", an old type of Death Metal emblem marching to war, stepping on countless of torn bodies or the chunky "Created From Darkness and Rage" inflaming with occult oriented feel and demented affirmations. Nonetheless, SORCERY to demonstrate something better, off the charts, clinging to the same mediocrity, and measure of repetitiveness, of some of newcomer bands that haven't been able to blossom yet. Also I missed the solo sections and the wide range of melodies that just weren't there, and even if those were, those weren't felt.

I assume that rating album six is a good enough for this effort of "Arrival At Six". It is a bit above the average crumb of filth, but I think that a band with such experience should have more to say about their music aside of strapping themselves onto someone else's carriage.