Krabathor is probably the biggest name in Czech death metal, but this rather thrash-inclined release is my favorite full-length in their catalog - not least because of the fantastic cover art by the great Martin Zhouf.
The arrangements are tight and well-executed, but the band somehow manages to feel loose. Both the playing and the production breathe freely. The writing is lovely in compositional terms, and the English lyrics (though poor in places) present some striking images ("I control strange fats in a wrong direction"), effective turns of phrase ("Brain dreams and innocence") and even some extended moments of profundity, like this excerpt from bassist Bronislav "Bruno" Kovařík on the song "Forget the Gods": "Spoiled brains are speaking through the wring mouth / its poisoned tongue is slimy like a snake / when tempting my mind to devotion / I'm starting to hate the sticky presence of faith."
But it's "Absence of Life", the final song before the closing instrumental, which boasts the finest poetry on the album, and ends the lyric content beautifully:
"We're resting on the universe splinters / Our voices expiring in the infinite / Our swords pricking into the emptiness / Our eyes seeing neither light nor darkness / Spaces of passing existence / Much vanity without the end / [...] / Only a slight fragment of time is defined for life / So slight in the world's history that we can paint [] ourselves as The Lost Existences / It depends on us whether we will remain so also after our death!"
Drummer Petr "Kopec" Kopeček penned those words, and indeed wrote the lyrics for most of the album. This was to be his last record with the band, as he would soon leave the metal scene for the grungier pastures of Chaos in Head (though he would later play in death metal band Dissolution and more recently with heavy metallers Calibos). His replacement Petr "Pegas" Hlaváč would cement the more brutal sound for which Krabathor is best known (particularly on the legendary Lies album from 1995), but for me the band never sounds better than it does here.