Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Dead Shape Figure
Label: Dynamic Arts Records
Release: 2010
Length: 43:28
Rating: 5/5
The Disease Of St. Vitus has picked St. Vitus as its central figure: the Sicilian saint, patron of pharmacists, innkeepers, brewers, winegrowers, copper engravers, dancers and actors, young people, and domestic animals. We know about St. Vitus from the text Martyrdom of St. Vitus, the Passio S. Viti, written around the year 600 in the Roman province of Lucania. According to it, Vitus was born the son of a wealthy, still-pagan family in present-day Mazara del Vallo, on the southwestern coast of the island of Sicily. When he was only 7, because of his faith and devotion to Christ, he had to flee to faraway Lucania with his tutor Modestus and his nurse Crescentia, since his father Hylas wanted to force him to renounce his faith. He ran right in the middle of Diocletian’s great persecutions of Christians. So Vitus had to suffer a lot for his faith in a foreign land. Caught as a Christian, he was hauled off to Rome with his two guardians. There Vitus worked a few miracles, among them healing the emperor’s son. Even so, he and his companions were sentenced to death. After the usual torture, they threw him into a cauldron of boiling oil. Angels pulled him out and escorted him to Lucania, where the young man died. As the story goes, his martyrdom took place at the start of Diocletian’s persecution, around 304 or 305. And it’s around this figure that Dead Shape Figure unfurl, with all the thrash fury of the new millennium.
The album was recorded at Virtalähde Analog Audio in Helsinki, and what grabs you almost instantly is a furious sonic wave of aggression, reminiscent of the wonderful dissonant miracles of the Swedish apostles of rage, The Haunted. Comparisons aside, you could describe the record as an honest, infectiously wild string of well-calibrated metal arguments, and from the first track, Suicide Continental, Dead Shape Figure stay consistent and don’t let you out of the claws of their bloodthirsty courtship for even a second. The energy level is always parked in the red zone, somewhere between hypnosis and possession. The band is made up of top-notch vocalist Galzi Kallio, Overrun’s former guitarist Juhani Ilari Flinck, ex-six-stringer of Lithuria and Clutch Mental Hospital Kride Lahti, his Overrun comrade and former Spirit Disease member, drummer Mohkis, and bassist (and former guitarist of the Finnish crew) Erno Talvitie – Bass. Their vital juices and outstanding synergy form a healthy, full-blooded core of music, and DSF sound like obsessed avengers out to settle scores with the enemy and all the unbelievers. Heretics get impaled on stakes by murderous sonic perfection and several tons of pure-blooded, iconoclastic violence in every last detail.
Dead Shape Figure hold the helm of their fate firmly and decisively in their own hands. The course is set loud and clear – only the best is good enough! The infection you tried to shake off after your first exposure to At The Gates or The Haunted is back. Your head gets split open by a surgically precise barrage of sensual riffs and a ten-ton mace to the face, right between the eyes. The result is sexy, apocalyptic and otherworldly, so remember the name Dead Shape Figure, because it’s about to become your next big mantra – you simply won’t be able to escape it! And that’s as certain as death itself!
This review was written in collaboration with Rock Hard Slovenija and RockLine.
Line-up
Galzi Kallio – vocals
Juhani Ilari Flinck – guitar
Kride Lahti – guitar
Mohkis – drums
Erno Talvitie – bass
Tracklist
1. Suicide Continental
2. Seraphim
3. Face On The Nails
4. Felix Culpa
5. Amberstar
6. Madonna Of Seven Sorrows
7. Idiopolis
8. Shrouds
9. Cities Of The Plain
