If Grimfist's 10 Steps To Hell works as well as some other well known 10 step programs then sign me up right away because as far death and thrash metal goes, very few bands are serving it up as raw and brutal as this trio from Norway does on their second release. Their first CD Ghouls of Grandeur in 2001 was produced by Peter Tagtgren and turned into very decent selling album for Candlelight Records and now the time has come to follow up the impressive sounding debut and they do just that on 10 Steps.
The CD begins with a solid shot to the face with the full on speed assault of "The Power" which raises the bar for the rest of the CD right from the start as it sounds as if vocalist Frediablo's (nice name) sole reason for existence is to see how quickly he can blow out his vocal chords. You do get offered some brief respite as the song eventually slows down into a very cool, slow Sabbath style groove half way through. The second track "Separation Of My Soul" returns back to the full fledged attack and features some killer, classic Death Angel style riffs from guitarist Ole Walaunet. "Unborn" is where the band begins to mix things up a bit more with varying tempos, a mix of clean and death vocals and some great drum work from newcomer Christian Svendsen. "The Ashes Of The Gods" is probably the strongest sounding cut that delivers the most bang for the buck with some very intense riffing and Walaunet rips off 2 excellent solos which combine his taste for both speed and melody. If there is one weak point on 10 Steps To Hell, it would have to be the rather one dimensional vocal style, there's just not a lot of deviation from the death style vocal shredding and I got the feeling that this disc would have benefited from more of a mix of the 2 styles I mentioned in "Unborn". Still this remains a very strong outing overall that kicks ass musically and I'm sure we'll be hearing more from Grimfist in the future.
Track Listing
1) The Power
2) Separation Of My Soul
3) Breed Apart
4) Unborn (Intro)
5) Unborn
6) The Ashes Of The Gods
7) Reep The Fire
8) Touched By A Shadow Of Evil
9) Tools Of The Trade
10) Fight or Die
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