ALBUM REVIEW: Serpentine Dominion – Serpentine Dominion

Adam Dutkiewicz’s latest offering to the world of heavy music, Serpentine Dominion, isn’t the sort of project we’ve come to expect from the KILLSWITCH ENGAGE guitarist. Replacing the metalcore stylings of a careers worth of production work, his other side project TIMES OF GRACE, and, of course, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE. Paired with the vocal talents of George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher of CANNIBAL CORPSE fame and former THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER drummer Shannon Lucas this is an out-and-out extreme metal project.

So does it live up to the promise of its creators? For the most part; no. Fisher sounds as brutal and guttural as ever even if a lot of the impact is stolen by some slightly vague social political lyrical commentary and Adam D, as ever, brings a plethora of riffs to the table. Jagged Cross Legion is heavier than anything off the last KILLSWITCH ENGAGE and Adam D’s voice lends an extra element to the compositions at times but, for the most part, SERPENTINE DOMINION is far more a sum of its constituent parts than a collaborative element between the three to create something really great.

That’s not to say SERPENTINE DOMINION is a bad record: you can’t really go wrong when you’ve got Adam Dutkiewicz on guitar and Corpsegrinder on vocals but that’s all that it is. It’s the guy from CANNIBAL CORPSE singing over the heavier bits of KILLSWITCH ENGAGE. There’s plenty of great things about this album; the production sounds great, Corpsegrinder is characteristically brutal and Adam D carries out some brilliant guitar work but this isn’t any old band. This is a project from two of the biggest names of their respective genres and, fun side project it might be, they should be achieving a lot more than this.

Rating: 7/10

Serpentine Dominion is set for release on October 28th via Metal Blade Records.

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