Mind Reflections

by Eduardo Rivadavia

One thing that must be said about Holland's Pestilence -- love them or loathe them -- is that they never stopped moving and evolving; progressively refining and expanding their songwriting tableau in an effort to bend and transform the accepted rules applied to the death metal genre with each and every album. Unfortunately (and in eerie, historical parallel to the plight suffered by Switzerland's like-minded Coroner), that restless drive for change also alienated almost as many fans as it attracted, accelerated the process of Pestilence's demise, and resulted in the release of 1994's Mind Reflections retrospective sooner than many might, in retrospect, have wished. Nevertheless, within its 16 selections -- many of which comprised previously unheard live recordings -- one can easily identify the group's perpetual development and distinctive leaps of maturity from album to album -- even without the benefit of a chronological arrangement. "Parricide" and "Subordinate to the Domination" represent the deathly thrashings of 1988's formative but viciously intense debut Malleus Maleficarum; "Out of the Body," "The Process of Suffocation" and "Dehydration" reveal the ripening instrumental and compositional technicality that pushed 1989's Consuming Impulse to the head of the progressive death metal class; "Twisted Truth," "Land of Tears" and "The Secrecies of Horror" showcased the flourishing melodicism that both infiltrated and broke 1991's Testimony of the Ancients wide open of any compositional shackles; and the restrained grooves of "Mind Reflections" and ambient experiments of "Voices from Within" parlayed the "anything goes" attitude behind 1993's eclectic but often misunderstood Spheres. In sum, this was a wide gamut of musical strategies to be explored by a single band in just four releases, but all of them more loyal to the spirit of extreme metal because of it. And, more importantly, most all of them inventive to a fault, so that Mind Reflections provides an excellent first glance into the varied world of Pestilence.