(Greyhaze Records)
Total Playing Time: 41:33

SARCOFAGO hold a special place in extreme metal’s history for a good reason, but that reason isn’t necessarily “The Worst”, which is being re-releases here through Greyhaze Records (it’s the first time the album has been available on vinyl and cassette).

Following 1994’s stripped-down release “Hate”, SARCOFAGO released what would be their last full-length album, 1996’s ironically titled “The Worst”.

Where can I begin from? The Brazilian Death/Thrashers are doing couple of things I kinda wished they hadn’t! They use a drum machine (thankfully they finally learned how to programize it!), they explore Groove Metal, wanting at the same time to be a brutal Death Metal band. The riffs are all bland and uninteresting, and at times they actually sound like a bad Groove Metal band with Black Metal vocals. Wagner’s vocal style just doesn’t match here, it doesn’t fit with the music.

In this record, unfortunately, not even the keyboard parts (that added some chilling atmosphere in “The Laws Of Scourge”) worked well. And that’s pretty sad, because “The Worst” sometimes showed some kind of potential, ”Army Of The Damned” and “Plunged In Blood”, for example, could’ve been decent tracks if they calmed down their artificial drumming and changed their overly repetitive guitar tone. But that’s it: they were mere wasted potential and nothing else.

Well I wouldn’t recommend this to anybody. Maybe if you’re a huge fan of SARCOFAGO you might slightly enjoy a track or two, like I did.

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Nikos Manousis