The origins of Maltese act Victims Of Creation go back to the early nineties, but except for some local ‘popularity’, this band wasn’t of any importance. However, it was a pity because Victims Of Creation did have some potential. After a couple of years, the band was put to rest, but when the remaining original members Rex and Dino started jamming again with AJ Burn (who was, by the way, their colleague in another band, Lithomancy), the band was sort of reborn. Shortly after Daniel Bartolo joined the crew. He did play with Rex and Dino in the Griffin Device-project, so as a matter of fact, all members sort of knew each other. A first highlight was the band’s return on stage on the first edition of the Malta Doom Metal Festival in 2009. Since this gig, and some other live performances, seemed to work out very well, the four friends decided to continue Victims Of Creation, and history brings us the album Symmetry Of Our Plagues Existence, a five-tracker that lasts for almost an hour (except for the hidden part at the end).
Symmetry … opens with Chapter XXIII, which reminds me a lot to very early Cathedral, injected with elements from My Dying Bride. It’s a great creation, this opening track, with lots of tempo-changes (from ultra-slow to even slower), a huge differentiation in melody, and a nice dose of varying spheres: sometimes in the vein of the earliest nineties, then somewhat seventies-oriented, or drenched in the obscurity from this century’s most morbid funeralised Doom. Inject all this with details from Evoken, Candlemass, Paradise Lost (pre-Gothic-era), Decomposed, Solitude Aeternus and Thergothon, and you might have a clue of what’s more to come. The sickest doomsters amongst us will, for sure, appreciate the long average duration of the tracks, for both the variation and intensity, for the grotesquery and the modestly elaborated creativity. At the same time, many will dislike the material for unknown reasons, so stop breathing and [self-censoring, for not using a terminology that makes the average population weep].
Despite a ‘dated’ approach, Symmetry sounds enormously refreshing and therefore I have to give twelve points to Malta.