Fifteen years after the release of Dimensions, Believer has finally returned with a new album. Fifteen years is a long time. Long enough to forget just how brutal Believer’s music was, how insane Joey Daub’s drumming was and how the band composed riffs so technical that most other bands wouldn’t have dreamed of playing them. And then you listen to Gabriel and it all comes back to you. Metal isn’t supposed to sound this good. The typical Believer elements are present, including the seemingly random time changes and Kurt Bachman’s screaming vocals, such that Gabriel could easily have been released years ago as the immediate follow-up to Dimensions. As with any Believer album, there are some changes – keyboard, sound and voice programming throughout that are slightly overused, leaving me wishing they would have let the music stand by itself. Still, this is unmistakably Believer, and unmistakably a great album. Welcome back.
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