Exhorder – Defectum Omnium

Written by on 23-03-2024 at 11:56.

Yes, someone had to come up with that message and it is perhaps not surprising that it is the recalcitrant Exhorder that brings us the long-awaited “failure of all” in 2024. Almost five years earlier these groove masters released their very good comeback album Mourn The Southern Skies. Not an optimistic title by the way. On that record a number of more than decent songs were held together by two sturdy bookends. On the left there was the blisteringly fast thrasher My Time and on the other side the oppressive, heralding title track that (still) gives visions of purple skies vibrating with heat. What a mighty track!

Defectum Omnium also contains a number of the latter type of doom tracks. The powerfully sung (with almost Dio-like intonation) The Tale Of The Unsound Mind for instance. However, the Stolen Hope part of the eighth track – the Defectum Omnium part of that song is just ominous (church) choir singing – is perhaps even more impressive in terms of melancholy. Drifting wistfully into depression, and with a light Eric A.K. sob, singer Kyle Thomas confides to us: “Don’t bother seeking darkness, it’ll always come for you” after which his powerful, coarse-grained vocals easily chase away the deepest darkness. A monumental passage on this album with crashing bass guitar and dragging riffs and therefore definitely a candidate for song of the year here in my house, if it weren’t for the high vocals that sound a bit theatrical towards the end. The solemn atmosphere is also cut off very abruptly. I checked to see if this was due to my promo, but on Spotify the transition to the keyboard intro Three Stage Of Truth is like a head-on collision with a concrete wall too. Yet the song remains one of the highlights of the record. Just like the absorbing “look at me now” in Taken By Flame, which makes us hope that Anselmo, Brown, Wylde and Benante will one day release some new music into the world, because this touches the beautiful core of NOLA. And yes, I do know that Slaughter In The Vatican came out way back in 1990.

Oh, and thrashers are present too of course. Very good ones even, like the bitter opening verses of Wrath Of Prophecies in which an angry Thomas sounds a bit like Mark Osegueda (Death Angel and with a nice side job these days). The bouncing Year Of The Goat and Lacing The Well with its fast guitar solos should also be mentioned here. The latter song also contains that recognizable New Orleans groove that the band presented to a larger audience so early. Thomas easily shifts from hopeless atmospheres “not sure how I feel, not sure I’m capable of more” to intransigence in a shouted “and lacing the well”. Exhorder has an incredibly good song here.

Okay, so groove and thrash and a bit of melancholy, has everything remained the same? Well, certainly not. First of all, guitarist/songwriter and co-founder Vinnie LaBella is no longer in Exhorder. His lead work has been taken over by Pat O’Brien (ex-Cannibal Corpse) and Pat does so with verve, fire and (above all) the energy that suits the genre. We thoroughly enjoy his dexterous, quite melodic work in a track like Wrath Of Prophecies in which he seems to want to mislead us at the beginning by introducing it as a death metal solo. However, O’Brien has not (yet?) been working on the writing of songs. These were written by Thomas, bassist Jason Viebrooks and drummer Horn. Especially if we take LaBella’s comment that he wrote 95% of the music for the previous albums, it is striking that his departure has brought about a relatively limited shift in the band’s sound. And so we come to the second change, because the band brings its hardcore influences to the front more than before. Sedition is a pure (and therefore somewhat simple) hardcore punk fighter with the burning fire and indignation that is so typical of the genre. The verses of Forever And Beyond Despair also have their origins here, while the chorus is carried by a nice, tauntingly slow thrash riff. As a thrasher it may take some getting used to, but both songs have certainly earned their place on the album, if only for the variety and the carnage that they will cause live.

I have to make a small comment about the potentially thoroughbred thrasher Divide And Conquer. This one sounds a bit harmless, partly due to the frequently repeated chorus. This means that not only the title has a similarity with the almost eponymous song by Sacred Reich. The riff rips and grinds away for quite some time though.

Defectum Omnium is more than upheld by a number of very strong tracks, the dynamics and carefully balanced order in the track list, the professional playing of the musicians and those very strong vocal cords of Kyle Thomas. Easily worth dozens of spins, this new Exhorder! The album will only grow.

Score:

85/100

Label:

Nuclear Blast, 2024

Tracklisting:

  1. Wrath of Prophecies
  2. Under the Gaslight
  3. Exhorder – Defectum Omnium
  4. The Tale of Unsound Minds
  5. Divide and Conquer
  6. Year of the Goat
  7. Taken by Flames
  8. Defectum Omnium – Stolen Hope
  9. Three Stages of Truth – Lacing the Well
  10. Sedition
  11. Desensitized
  12. Your Six

Line-up:

  • Kyle Thomas – Vocals, guitar
  • Pat O’Brien – Guitar
  • Sasha Horn – Drums
  • Jason VieBrooks – Bass guitar

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