February 4, 1999
London WC2 LA2
In between swigs of (oh! the debauchery) tonic water, their singer and diabolical mastermind [B]Glen Benton[/B] sets out to prove to the sickly Dungeons & Dragons crowd just how evil he is...
Jesus doesn't want Deicide for a sunbeam. These doom lords of death metal were obviously bullied at Sunday school, and still smarting after all these years, continue to trot out their tired odes to the Lord Of Chaos with their familiar scary throat growl. In between swigs of (oh! the debauchery) tonic water, their singer and diabolical mastermind Glen Benton sets out to prove to the sickly Dungeons & Dragons crowd just how evil he is.
Not very, as it goes. Rock'n'roll is occasionally at its visceral best at its most stupid, and there's something undeniably big and clever about the further outreaches of metal. The likes of Slayer and Napalm Death have already made tectonic plates reverberate, while genuinely nasty black metal Norse groups like Burzum and Emperor have managed to provoke genuine revulsion and nausea. Sadly, Deicide don't do either. Or even come close.
Yelping like one of the gerbils he pathetically used to torture rather than howling like a wolf, Benton is all out of voodoo. If the devil's got all the best tunes he's keeping them for himself, because songs like 'Slave To The Cross' are the worst kind of satanic porridge. Tonight, Deicide are about as devilish and supernatural as, er, The Supernaturals.
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