Decerebration - Follow The Scars

After a 20 year hiatus, it was time for Decerebration the ravagers from Quebec to get back on track. A band with their first release dating back to 1994, falling to hibernation 4 years after. Broke radio silence on 2013 with a compilation they released, followed by their second, self-titled full length of 2015 and now this third full length of them with the title “Follow The Scars”. Their old school death metal spirit gets obvious early enough even for someone not familiar with the band.

Short creepy intro and then 'Infamous Duality' breaks the silence, huge and majestic. Great old school riffing, swirling and dark, followed either by groovy mid-tempo bits or heavy blast beats. Razor sharp riffs covering their entire extend altering with groovy parts and then back to blast beats again. Heavy growls and a bulldozer thick bass following the guitars, creating a tone leading straight back to the good ol days. Second track underway and things carry on from where the first one left them. The boys follow the old school protocol. First leads and solos make their presence known in this one. Their music in general has a solid death metal base, upon which they build as they please. Sometimes they take it to technical paths and other to more melodic ones.

It is 20 years after so anyone expecting the roughness of their early days, should get off this ship. Decerebration decided to brighten or modernize their sound if you prefer the term. This means many slammy parts and unfortunately some, luckily very few, clean vocals. I’ll be honest here and say that I despise clean vocals to such a genre. The barriers are really strict and if you wanna go over them, you need to have a good reason. Playing super tight old school death metal and then just adding a clean voice out of the blue is just like adding “Hello Kitty” to your sound.(A line Fenriz of Darkthrone used for a particular drum beat but works the same here). Anyway… that aside… tracks succeed one another and what I see is that they tend to have an awesome flow. Kind of gives you the sense of a continuum and this is something really underrated nowadays. Their technical moments are not more than they should be and in general they manage to preserve the aura they had in their first days, just giving it out in a modern view.

Great production pumping the already flawless performance of the musicians, balancing between old and new in a great way I believe. The point is how much you’ll find yourselves into it or not. It is definitely not the one to change your views on death metal. Far from it. It is always nice though to see a band that was present almost in the making of the genre, still being able to deliver the sound, decent as it should be. Aggressive, heavy and dark. I’ll raise my glass to that!

4 / 5 STARS


1. Scorched Memories
2. Infamous Duality
3. A Ghost Of Flesh And Blood
4. Follow The Scars
5. Break The Cycle
6. The Factless Prophecy
7. The Gift Of Anger
8. I Despise
9. L.T.E.I.


Self released
Reviewer: andychristos
Feb 7, 2022

Share this: