Review of the Album Lies by Czech Death Metal Band Krabathor

“Lies” is the third studio album by technical Czech death metal band Krabathor released in 1995 and by the way that this one starts, you would be thinking about whether this was the band’s finest hour at the time or not. “The Truth About Lies” has this sort of atmospheric feel as there is a cruel kind of laugh and the technical pounding drums set the tone for this song. The main melodic riff and the pounding drums perfectly show that these Czech guys are here to play and impress!

"Unnecessarity” is a song about how we can become a prisoner to our own useless and often times counterproductive thoughts as we often times resist what is happening in this moment. “Short Report on the Ritual Carnage” starts off with sounds that would be present in a bowling alley. We hear influences that would later set the foundation of bands such as Madrid Spain’s Avulsed.

Tears, Hope, and Hate in terms of the style and riffing structure is similar to early 1990’s Florida death metal as I hear a similarity to the song See Through Dreams in one part as the riffing is so close to what the album Human had and that one was released in 1991, just four years before this album was released. The song called Rebirth of Blasphemy starts with a short orchestration part as sounds of broken glass and screams are heard. The song is lyrically criticizing the church as being a false institution and corrupt. The album just like the Krabathor albums at least that I’ve heard have repetition of certain words, chunky, heavy riffing, and just a brutal and technical way of playing death metal.

“Stonedream” continues the band’s approach to chunky riff based death metal with some harmony laden guitar play reminiscent to Morbid Angel. The next different part of the riffing is like early to mid-1990’s In Flames style melodic death metal riffing. The song lyrically is about what happens to a person that is overwhelmed by their senses and they cannot seem to escape from the ego part of their mind even if they want to fly out of their mind and into another dimension. The album ends with the instrumental song called Believe which once again creates a stellar effort musically from these Czech veterans of the death metal music scene. With Lies, Krabathor gets even better and they would reach their peak perhaps here or with 1998’s Orthodox but that is a tough call.