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Here’s a blast from the past to finish a great year of reviewing albums. New York’s Dehumanized released their debut album back in the late ‘90s, Prophecies Foretold, and then promptly disappeared.

Playing dark death metal influenced by other bands from the New York/Northeast scene at the time, Prophecies Foretold garnered them some notoriety, but was released on a tiny label and suffered from bland cover art.


Dehumanized were quickly forgotten.

Jump to the present and two of the original members, guitarist Rich Nagasawa and drummer George Torres, have resurrected Dehumanized and have decided to give it another go with a new lineup (a demo from Dehumanized with Nagasawa, Torres and a different lineup appeared in 2005, but never resulted in any other releases at the time).

Controlled Elite, released on the death metal centric record label Comatose Music, is the result of their latest efforts and is a fine death metal album to close out the year.

Semi-technical brutal death metal with no surprises whatsoever typifies Controlled Elite, but Dehumanized ratchet up the intensity and have delivered a fine example of the genre. Good, solid production, catchy songs with tons of riffs, plenty of variety with tempo changes, and a distinct emphasis upon just flattening the listener are obviously Dehumanized’s intentions with Controlled Elite, and results are wildly successful.

Capitalizing on the template laid down by Cannibal Corpse, Dehumanized feature bottom heavy vocals and a few nods towards slam with slow, grinding, metal filled riffs.

A few darker moments appear in the slower tracks, but Controlled Elite is basically a solid American death metal album, simple as that.

(released November 27, 2012 on Comatose Music)

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.