Danish outfit The Cleansing presents us with a savage, but strictly administered dosage of brutal death, of the old Floridian variety. It’s technically challenging, with intertwining riff-modules and changing rhythms, mixed with a deep and unrelenting, but comprehensible growls. 

The growls are among the best – the difficult balance between guttural animalistic snarls and the verbal utterance of a lyrical text (in other words: something extremely civilized, expressed by a beast) is reached, seemingly with ease. At many points during Poisoned Legacy – especially in the song “Flesh Recycled”, the growls runs the melody more than anything else. The lyrics themselves are very good compared to most other death metal acts.

The Cleansing bears some resemblances to American bands like Dying Fetus and Misery Index (who have a lot of band members in common), although not as grind-inspired as the latter. As The Cleansing mentions in their press material, they have sought inspiration in the groovy death metal of another Danish band, Dawn of Demise. As DoD is one of my great hopes for the future of Danish metal, I think it’s a very good place to seek inspiration!

Of the few negative sides the production bugs me the most. Often the bass drowns, and the tams all sound the same. On the other hand, with such good musicians it must be hard to give them all enough audio-room. The production, as a whole, is a bit too pure for my tastes.

Poisoned Legacy, if viewed as a single piece of art, is also too monotone, in spite of the superb technical qualities. There simply is not enough  variation in the tempos and tunes from start till end, and as lack of diversity is quite bad, in my opinion, it certainly damages the overall rating.