Diagnosis

It’s flabbergasting how impressive bands can slither by right under your nose in your home country without you knowing a thing. One of the finer advantages we reporters have is that our lazy asses occasionally get served promos right to our mail slots, so we can at best get gems like this one out of the blue straight to our laps.

Diagnosis is DLO’s second album and in my books, it is a textbook example of how to make death metal intriguing and appealing in the year 2007. Musically, it nods heartily in the direction of Death and Carcass. It’s only fitting that the album ends with a blistering cover version of Incarnated Solvent Abuse. You’ll get a pretty good idea of the record’s style by mixing the grim technical mastery of Necrotism with the rocking vibes of Heartwork, just wrapped in a vortex of disordered murder-chaos. If you thought the singer would imitate Jeff Walker, you would strike out in a second. The output of vocalist Infection brings in more of a Florida-flavour to the stew, as they are much more guttural than you would expect. The overall playing is frighteningly tight and the production is crushingly superior, as the music occasionally gets quite chaotic, but the sounds stay clear and merciless.

Differentiating songs for analysis doesn’t do much good as the album keeps a steady, speedy base for its entire duration. Once the punishing riffage of Diagnosis: Deranged hooks you in with airguitaring aplenty, hair will be flung onto the walls and fists be banged against foreheads with reckless intent. When very occasionally slowing down with sludging chords, like on To Walk With The Dead, shades of Nile pop up in the atmosphere, which is only a good thing. Thrashy sections, groovy elements and grinding blasts are served with good taste and just in the right places to make them spices that really add into the overall effect of this steamrolling ball of metal. Guitar solos are present but they are not given the front of the stage, as they serve the bigger mammoth of overpowering very well with spirited melodic moments.

I guess some can consider Diagnosis an album with technical flawlessness and bland songwriting but out of the descendants of Carcass and company, De Lirium’s Order bring a very catchy, brutal flavour into it with different elements from several genres. For me, the hooks were abundant and blandness was nowhere to be found. I don't know what it tells us about the twisted mindframe of the Finnish music lover, that an album like this landed in the top 30 upon its release. Oh well, more power to the loonies. Definitely the biggest surprise of the year for me so far and a must-hear for any fan of high-quality, insanely skilled death metal.