Sphere     

Homo Hereticus
Godz Ov War Productions 2012

Polish death metal dominators, Sphere bring about a reign of darkness and brutality on their sophomore effort.  Homo Hereticus is a lightning-quick, audio pummeling.  Faster streams of blasting death are fused with American style rhythmic passages.  This is exemplified right out of the gate on Forever Sworn To Blasphemy and you can hear echoes of Morbid Angel in the midtempo sections of the song.   Godless Profanity keeps the momentum moving forward with a slightly more memorable and catchy main riff coupled with fat bass lines.  Harmonic squeals puncture the soundscape before dropping some ultra-low death metal vocal distortions.  I am not a fan of this effect.  The track ends on a meaty groove.  Third Scent Carcass dishes out unholy gusts of Morbid Angel-esque punishment.  The title-track uses an eerie keyboard intro before bulldozing you with rolling drums and a sadistic amount of clicky double-bass.  The tempo changes on a dime for a stumbling effect and I truly love the domineering groove at the 2:34 mark.  It actually reminds me of V:28.  A cool, horror movie style intro sets the mood on Grave's Cold Darkness.  Destructive, undulating riffs swirl in a slow motion Whirlpool of powerful death metal but there are lulls in the song for some reason.  And I guess that brings me to the crux of my problem with these guys.  Sphere for me writes some interesting tunes, however as a whole their Homo Hereticus albums blends in with the deluge of bands playing this style of American and European death metal meshed together.  Despite the album only clocking in at 35 minutes, it certainly feels longer because nothing truly stands out.  However this is solid death metal which measures up well with their peers.