I like my death metal furious and at least hook-laden if not melodic. The Finnish death/grind collective has plenty of the former but not too much of the latter, preferring to just overwhelm the listener with their technical prowess and speed rather than offering nuance, ebbs and flows and the likes even though this is their 2nd album after "Sanguine Vigil" (2018).

If the question is are Vili Mäkinen (bass, keyboards, vocals), Aleksi Vähämäki (backing vocals, guitars) and Nico Niemikko (drums) competent musicians then it is answered decidedly in the positive. Taking cues from the first two Hypocrisy and Gorefest albums (Mäkinen’s growls even a cross of early Alf Peter Tägtgren and Jan-Chris De Koeijer, respectively) with a Napalm Death twist rounded up with the Carcassian "Symphony Of Sickness" and "Necrotiscism: Descanting The Insalubrious" sometimes melodiscism (the cover practically screaming early Carcass), Galvanizer takes off on the right note with the catchy "Servants Of The Scourge" after the classic gory intro a’la early Obituary or Sepultura, with "The Inexorable" forming a 1,2 punch taste for the perverse, but then the quality goes down a notch on the short and brutal "Blaze From Within". Even though the subsequent "Chthonic Profanation" is very good, it is followed by several generally uninteresting tracks where Aleksi Vähämäki’s guitar seems to be on autopilot. Of those, "Ground Above" is probably the worst but the next 3 tracks are just a tad better. Where is the melody, where are the catchy riffs? Were it not for the excellent closer "Of Flesh Unknown" there would have been no decimal point after 3 in the score.

Galvanizer sure has potential but they don’t seem to be giving their all on this album. Perhaps the thirst for brutality and carnage got in the way of music but I won’t become a fan. They will have to really improve on the next album to regain my interest because the good tracks are just enough to realize that there is just one Exhumed and one might as well listen to them, instead.

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