After years of having a luke-warm reaction those mighty Floridian (orig. Buffalo) deathsters, I'm finally of the opinion that this album is pure genius. Maybe there wasn't too much new here, or anything more than Slayer squared, but dammit, that's enough for me! Honestly, I love every track on this album now, having gone through this weird Malevolent phase over the last year. An essential (unfortunately out of print as of 2000) release to document the early 90s death metal scene.<br><br> Update, this is now pretty easy to get, and I still listen to this and Retribution all the damn time. Essential death metal.

The second half of the early Malevolent monster, Retribution continues the incredible "Slayer on crank" music that Phil Fasciana created. The onslaught is aided by Solstice members Rob Barrett and Alex Marquez (godly guitar and drums, respectively) fleshing out the sound, preparing it for the rantings of Brett Hoffman. Not as fast as they would become, Retribution is still the first peak for this seminal (seminole) band.

Ah, the infamous Stillborn. Even a totally cool cover couldn't persuade people to look past the tepid vocal performance by the previously unstoppable Brett Hoffman. There are some pretty tasty riffs here highlighted by more bullet train drumming, but Hoffman's standard beltings make Stillborn more of a "normal" death metal album, nothing too far removed from everything else out there. It's not as bad as you might hear that it is, but it's nowhere near the perfection of the first two albums.

I Have to admit that I didn't really pay too much attention to Phil and the boys for the past few releases, but after checking out a few minutes of TFAoM, I couldn't pass on this! Ludicrously insane, thanks to returning skinsman Dave Culross, who left Suffocation to fly in and record all 13 of these tracks in like 3 days. Pretty unbelievable, as there are some serious nuances here that Dave picks up on nicely. Besides Culross's return, the fine art also sees guitarist Rob Barret and Brett Hoffman back in the vocal chair. Call it a Malevolent reunion, but it all seems to work, things speeding along for almost the entire album. One major change though is Phil's addition of keyboards into some of the main tracks. What the hell, they had to slow down at some point, right? Well, don't get too worried, cuz this disc also holds some of the fastest moments yet. Things tend to drag a bit towards the end (hell, the album is almost an hour long!), but for the most part, not too shabby.