French progressive death metallers Voice Winter released this 7-track opus of theirs last year via M.U.S.I.C. Records, but for whatever reason it did not find its way to my pile of stuff to review until recently. So, we are not exactly dealing with a brand new album here, but let us discuss it anyway, shall we?

The tracks that "Childhood of Evi"l is comprised off certainly hav a sense of energy and drive to them, but the song arrangements are neither inspired nor interesting and the riffs are simply too mundane and lacklustre. The growled vocals are one thing, but whenever the singer tries to vary them it sounds half-hearted and pretty fucking far from convincing. The keyboards are downright awful in places and add nothing to the songs whatsoever, which is frustrating. The lyrics are not exactly well-written either.

"Childhood of Evil" is not exactly all-out terrible or utterly lame, but it is anything but captivating and compelling. The material is too bland and run-of-the-mill, the tunes never seem to go anywhere, the experiments never manage to get my rocks up in the air, and hardly anything sticks in your memory even after having listened to it a number of times. There are way better progressive death metal records out there than this one by Voice Winter. Skip this one, folks. It is not very imaginative and certainly not worth your precious time.