Scalpture – Landkrieg
Release Date: 7th March 2024
Label: Testimony Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal
FFO: Death, Skelethal, Sepulchral Curse, Crypts of Despair.
Review By: Eric Wilt
For those who enjoy a healthy dose of European history with their death metal, German band Scalpture presents Landkrieg, the lyrics of which are based on the Thirty Years’ War, which took place from 1618-1648.
I first came across Scalpture when I was browsing death metal albums and noticed a red monochromatic Eliran Kantor painting gracing the cover of a record called Feldwärts. A Kantor painting is enough motivation for me to give an album a listen, and I found the music contained within to be good for a few spins. A little over two years later, Scalpture is back with Landkrieg, a new album that features what is perhaps the most beautiful Kantor painting released to date. Landkrieg is German for “land warfare,” and if you look closely at the foreground of what appears to be merely a pastoral painting, you will see a man taking a bloody ax to another man.
What you get on Landkrieg is very workmanlike death metal that is good, but that lacks anything to make it stand out or grab you as you listen to it. Comprised of guitarists Tobias Aselmann and Felix Marbach, bassist Niklas Neuwöhner, drummer Moritz Nixdorf, and vocalist Thorsten Pieper, Scalpture’s death metal is good for a listen every now and then, but as a whole, the album is missing that certain something that boosts a record from good to outstanding. Talent wise, Scalpture is lacking nothing, as the instruments are played with skill and precision and the vocals, which sound like a cross between Chuck Schuldiner and John Tardy, are laced with passion and verve.
Songs like Into Catastrophe, Wallenstein, and Schwedentrunk show that Scalpture has the chops to keep up with the big guns of the genre, but they aren’t quite there when it comes to composition. Landsknecht, a song that leans into Swedish death metal a little more than most of the songs on the album is probably the best song on Landkrieg, but even it is just good when compared to other death metal songs out there.
While Scalpture hasn’t wowed me yet, I’m not writing them off because there is enough potential to make it worth following their career. Landkrieg is a good album, and I’m sure it’ll find an audience, but I’m still waiting for Scalpture to break through with something that is worthy of the potential they’ve shown on both Feldwärts and now Landkrieg.
(3 / 5)
