Review by Felix on July 22, 2026.

It took Benediction seven years to produce the follow-up to “Organized Chaos”. They promised it wouldn’t take so long next time. Barely twelve more years had passed when “Scriptures” was released. Fortunately, the question of the release date remained the only broken promise made by these gentlemen. The album from 2020 documents the pure dogma. It screams, tastes, spits, and stinks of death metal. Maybe this is not the formula for an overly exciting release, and it is definitely not the recipe for a work that defines the coordinates of a style anew. But it lays a rock-solid foundation for a good album. And that is what “Scriptures” is.

From the furious opener to the strong closer, Benediction serve up all the ingredients the death metal community loves to hear. This includes some standardized sections, but each and every sub-genre has its fixed parameters. For example, it is a matter of course that all Dave Ingram needs is the number of notes that fit into an eighth of an octave to deliver a convincing performance. Or take the beginning of “The Crooked Man”. Its mid-tempo approach and the guitar leads are not very exciting, but a simple tempo change makes the entire song much better. Yes, Benediction are not too proud to work with almost primitive tools. But the result does not sound primitive, and that’s the bottom line. A key factor for the cool big picture is that there still seems to be a blazing fire in the band. Otherwise, a blower like “Rabid Carnality” would hardly be possible. Considering its high velocity, it appears only logical that the song clocks in under three minutes. Another important component is the maturity of the band’s backbone. After more than three decades of making noise, Darren Brookes and Peter Rewinski know everything about the construction of a good song. Given this, the material shines with the right amount of breaks to find the balance between coherence and variability – and everything results in a strong flow of most pieces. “In Our Hands, the Scars” is just one example of the smooth massacres that Benediction offer.

Okay, the predecessor as well as the successor of “Scriptures” have one or two songs which stand out immediately, “Dripping with Disgust”, “Killing Music” or “Crawling over Corpses”. The here reviewed album cannot help with that. But this does not affect the overall impression, because it is also true that no track is going nowhere. Maybe it just needs a little time until tracks like “Neverwhen” (great riffing at the beginning, repeated in the centre of the song) reveal their whole morbid beauty. “Stormcrow” is another promising candidate for a first date with the album. However, the general harshness of the (with all respect) old dudes is impressive. The more or less perfect production makes it even easier to dive deeply into the twelve songs. My favourite detail is the double bass. Whenever it paves its way powerfully, the band becomes a real force. Fortunately, this happens quite often. So from my point of view, “Scriptures” has something to say. It was no totally spectacular comeback. But bands like Benediction live from their reliability, not from sensational moments. And I hope they will be on our side for some years more, although Dave Ingram cannot be part of the line-up any longer. Good luck to him; let’s hope that his health problems do not take away his joy in life and in heavy music.

Rating: 7.9 out of 10