Legion Of The Damned - Ravenous Plague

LOTD return with a further release typical of their style and this is my first encounter in a while as their last release passed me by completely. What you get with LOTD is consistency with the production and rhythm being extremely tight, brutal and in some quarters, these Dutch monsters include some dark and often blackened influences into their chord progression. Such is ‘Doom Priest’. It uses darker scales, it sounds more eerie, a little mystical, a little “eastern”, far removed from the expected barrage based on previous encounters from tracks like the storming ‘Black Baron’.

‘Summon All Hate’ is a nice staccato driven thrash monster; it has some cool lead breaks at its start and battle forward like a tank running through a wood built barn. The double bass drumming is rib cage battering and the overall tirade is rather a good workout for your speaker cones. From memory I wasn’t sure LOTD played that many solos, however there are a fair few on this album, there is certainly a progression and development in their arsenal, a more forthright forceful delivery, which really defines this album ahead of some of their earlier material. ‘Morbid Death’ is a little raw but still refined in the LOTD mould. There is no denying that this is an extremely well executed song, style and album.

LOTD may have taken some flack in the past for their style; I know I had some reservations based on their earlier material. However, with ‘Ravenous Plague’ they have become or probably always have been to be fair, a tight and energetic expression of killer death thrash with a lot more variation as their career has progressed which can only be a good thing.