Review by JD on December 22, 2012.

When a band returns from a rather lengthy hiatus, it can be a crap shoot to whether or not they can recapture what they had before. Indiana based Radiation Sickness is such a band. Thay took eighteen years off (due to many factors, including a founding members suicide) but now reformed to play once again.

Originally a Death Metal/Grind/Crossover act, Radiation Sickness now seems to be leaning more to a Crossover/Thrash act, as heard on this album that has new material along with an Ep from the 90's. Opting for more of a melodic path, it seems that Radiation Sickness has grown.

The older Grind/Death/Crossover stuff is pretty good in itself but seems not to stand out. It's the newer material they are making that seems to have a better spark to it. I was so impressed with 'Tripping In Seas Of Madness' (brutal thrash crossover with a nasty attitude), that it made me forget the older material. Heavy and gore filled to the max, this band has finally put all of the time and efforts together, and the now can begin their dominance on the puny bands that they look down at.

I loved the Death/Grind of their earlier work, but the newer music that they are now hammering out seems to be exactly where they have been striving to be. The band seems finally completely comfortable with themselves and what they are about, and able to exude the full magnitude of their talents. It is good to see when a band hits their stride, and is ready to dominate all who are in their way.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship:9
Atmosphere: 8.5
Production: 8.5
Originality: 8
Overall: 8.5

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Review by JD on April 8, 2011.

Doom Metal... genre that is very close to my heart. From Doom masters Candlemass to the very first Black Sabbath album I have loved the sound of a low, slow and crushingly heavy guitar sound and the wail of bleakness. Now I have found another great Doom Metal band to take its place of reverence on the alter of doominess.

Requiem Eternam hails from the peaks that make up Switzerland. All of the mountainous topography of the homeland coupled with the cold winds that sweep through the rocky crags have had a lasting effect on this band. With darkened sorrow and crushing riffing, they deliver a Gothic Doom masterpiece that is hauntingly sung in a combination of French and English which adds to the supernatural feeling that the album holds. It is almost the equivalent of Candlemass going fully out gothic.

From the tormented and bleak strains of 'Angel Guide' to the pounding and grinding slow rhythms of 'Into The Blind World' Requiem Eternam paints the bleakest of visions that fuel the concept of the main writer (Phil R.XP: vocals & all instruments). It is a lyrically dank foray into a hapless person’s pained and tortured reality that is set in a world shrouded in darkness and filled with utter contempt for the light.

With visionary imagery and a knack for macabre stories, Requiem Eternam is one of the best out there for conveying a tale of doomish quality... and placing the listener right in the middle of it. Doom Metal has a new master and it is band from Switzerland. A perfect addition for any collection.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 9.5
Atmosphere: 9.5
Production: 9.5
Originality: 9.5
Overall: 9.5

Rating: 9 out of 10

Review by Felix on July 9, 2019.

Last night the new Sodom line-up entered the stage for the first time and the first 30 minutes were filled to the brim with classics of their meanwhile almost antique releases. Inter alia, "The Saw Is the Law" was performed. This shows the unbroken enormous popularity of the band's early works and Better Off Dead belongs to these classics - partly. On the one hand, it houses extremely strong tracks, on the other hand it is the first album where Sodom present a less furious inferno. "The Saw Is the Law" is a good representative of the record, because it combines the mid-harsh approach with a very catchy line. It is not known whether Lemmy (R.I.P.) cried when he heard this song for the first time, but he surely realized that this mid-paced, pretty simple tune would have enriched every Motörhead album as well. However, on Sodom's fourth full-length is not much left from the primitive brutality of In the Sign of Evil, the experimental vehemence of Obsessed by Cruelty or the surgical precision of Expurse of Sodomy.

Of course, Angelripper and his companions did not completely cut their roots. "An Eye for an Eye", the blustery opener, wants to be close to the songs that made "Agent Orange" to such an unexpected success and "Shellfire Defense" knows no mercy. A straightforward, fast-paced bullet invites the listener to a thrash metal headbanging session. Was this piece already written in 1986? I think so.

After the three killers at the beginning, the remaining material does not stack a lot of points. Two cover versions of Tank (acceptable) and Thin Lizzy (useless) dilute and lengthen the album without adding a significant value and songs like "Capture the Flag" provide a mix of rather tedious mid-tempo parts and some fast sequences that seem to have an alibi function. These tracks do not destroy the album as a whole, but the comparatively weak riffs and the noisy solos of Hoffmann are slightly annoying. "Bloodtrails", for example, shows these symptoms and even solid, but not outstanding songs like "Never Healing Wound", which offers an evocative chorus and a straight pattern, push it into the background. By the way, good choruses are not matter of course on Better Off Dead and in particular the title track fails in this respect. The amateurish chorus kills the actually decent tune, but the following "Resurrection" is even worse. A lame rhythm and strange choirs at the end go hand in hand with a bloodless chorus.

After (too) many average tunes, Sodom have a final ace up their sleeves. The intensive "Stalinorgel" is no compositional miracle, but it brings back some percent of the charming naivety of their very early days and creates a placably finish. Better Off Dead, seemingly equipped with a good budget for the recording session, has a couple of tracks that make it impossible to ignore it, but too many mediocre songs prevent a deep relationship. It is a typical album from 1990, when the dogma of pure thrash had already begun to crumble, and it does not spread the spirit of the real "Sodomania" - at least from my point of view.

Rating: 6.8 out of 10