Our ears had just about recovered from the seismic beast that was Subversive Blueprint [RM Review], and here comes The Destiny Program's fourth album, Gathas. Nothing much has particularly changed, but their attack has been refined, tempered in places to make those destructive slabs of noise hit all the harder. We bear witness to this less than one and a half minutes in, as intro 'Spenta Mainyu' explodes into 'Avesta'. The drumming in particular is truly immense – courtesy of new boy Christian Bass – capable at providing the base on which the songs can build on, or bulldozing anything in their path with blistering speed. But it's worth noting that anyone in the vicinity of Johannes Formella's vocals should wear protective headgear, as his roaring vocals could bring the roof down on top of you.

As you might guess from that statement, they don't inject melody like the watered down, befringed muppets on sale in Hot Topic. But they don't just dole out screams and bludgeon for the sake of being more metalcore than you; Formella's singing voice may not be the sweetest, but it's melodic enough to provide blissful reprieves from the band's sheer force, to take a breath before barging right back into the mosh with tracks as devastating as 'Trivial Commodity' and 'Our Notional Possession'.

Fifteen tracks is a bit too much, to the point some of the songs – as good as they are – are a little indistinguishable, hampering the aesthetic impact of a guitar motif that crops up a number of times throughout the album. That is, however, about as much as we can find wrong with this outstanding, monstrous effort from The Destiny Program.

Rating: 4/5 by Phill May

Tracklisting

1. Spenta Mainyu
2. Avesta
3. Plagiarism Commission
4. Through The Progressive Line
5. Road To A Recent Passage
6. Our Notional Possession
7. Trivial Commodity
8. The Current Horizon
9. Convention And Predictability
10. The Illicit Sound
11. Liars Poker
12. Children Of The Earth
13. Yasna
14. The Blackwater
15. Angra Mainyu

Further links

The Destiny Program on Myspace

Listen to the wall pulverisingly heavy sound of Germany's Destiny Program.