Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We are fascinated, as a society by the macabre, the acts of the Penny Dreadful and the interest in the disturbing and shocking actions of Government, disaster, horror and the pain received. We eat up these visual and aural stories, we soak in them as Lady Bathory would in the blood of her victims, we seek further information about the grizzly and it becomes a conversation piece when news relayed of the passing of someone in a ghoulish or morbid manner; no matter how refined or undaunted by the ghastly we believe we are, there is nothing quite like an Ode To Acts Of Murder, Dystopia and Suicide to get the blood pumping.

Suicide/Doom/Black Dutch metal band Deinonychus return to the arena is one of welcome, the genre having teeth restored and the lyrics having more bite than a gothic vampire chomping down on the neck of person they have fallen in love with. An ode, the poetic and the darkness that envelopes often go hand in hand, after all poetry is always about sex and death and after a decade away Marco Kehren’s vocals sit in the deep and the pit of the stomach and they ruminate over such things that are important; if sex and death are the staples of life and poetry then it is no wonder we find the macabre so ensnaring.

With Steve Wolz on drums and Markus Stock on keyboards joining Marco Kehren on this journey, this descent in to soulless and deadened is as listeners and fans might expect, complicated and brutal, viciously demanding and one in which the silence of the last ten years is eradicated and consigned to the bin of history. Ode To Acts Of Murder, Dystopia and Suicide is a hardened, forged by the greatest of blacksmiths, sweat pouring off the brow as the metal is hammered again and again into the shape of blunt, frank admissions and purity of sound, especially in tracks such as For This I Silence You, The Weak Have Taken The Earth, Dead Horse and There Is No Eden.

A stunning comeback, Deinonychus’ Ode To Acts Of Murder, Dystopia and Suicide is a modern classic of its kind.

Ian D. Hall