I'm going to get right to the point: Septicflesh (or Septic Flesh, or whatever) should've stayed dead. Splitting up after the wonderful "Sumerian Daemons" would have been a fitting conclusion to a delightful discography-the end of a vibrant, brazen platter of exceptional music coated in esoteric influences that greatly captured the Greeks' unique style of atmospheric death metal. Since reforming they've released haphazard, cluttered pieces of symphonic death metal that not only get more fattening with each release yet consistently confuse the pompous with the gallant-turds in tuxedos. "Titan" is the next logical step in the progression of this sound as it needlessly adds more and more to the already-capsized assimilation of bland death metal riffs and French horns and sh*t used to define these showy, vapid songs through which not an iota of quality emerges.I assume the concept of adding orchestral and symphonic influences is based on the presumption that incorporating the instrumental movements of an orchestra or symphony will greatly enrich a certain musical background-death metal in the case of Septicflesh. Sadly, lazy and often tepid musical foundations have become the rule rather than the exception with all these bands using symphonies and extra musicians to perform on their albums. These arrangements only add a microscopic flavor to the record, and while they are poignant and proper, the fact remains that they can't save "Titan" from the lackluster musical backbone that dooms it from the opening minutes of the utterly forgettable "War in Heaven." The added measures are fundamentally useless; they add little to the group's atmosphere and fail to season the blood of "Titan," which is easily the laziest and most forgettable display of instrumentation Septicflesh has ever created.
A fine way to test the stability of music heavily supplemented by symphonic arrangements is to forget about the trumpets and the tubas and the additional percussion and whatever else entirely, and instead focus on the band in its natural setting. With this in mind, "Titan" is completely vacant. Septicflesh, not including the additives, just sleepwalks through this whole thing, settling for uninspiring structures and guitar parts that can't even catch a snag. The escalating riff on "Dogma" and the chugging sequence on the title track are two examples among an album stuffed with the most generic and clichιd death metal riffs around, while the songs themselves are loaded with choirs and additional percussion and blast beats and goofy orchestrations (especially the stupid pseudo-noir vibe on "Confessions of a Serial Killer") while Septicflesh continues to shoehorn in as much as possible because IT HAS AN ORCHESTRA AND THAT MEANS IT NEEDS TO BE BIGGER THAN GOD HIMSELF AND EVEN MORE, JUST BECAUSE.
"Burn," the album's second song, features a chorus sung by Sotiris Vayenas, Septicflesh's longtime guitarist and clean vocalist, whose role as a second vocal option has diminished noticeably. The chorus I mentioned? He literally mumbles it, like he's bored or doesn't care; it represents the album magnificently. "Titan" gets its dagger in the heart through mundane songwriting and lethargic performances that have absolutely nothing to say or show on their own and instead lean on the huge symphony to carry the weight. The abstract melodies, dynamic song structures, and emphasis on cabalistic atmospheric elements that opened innumerable creative avenues for the Septicflesh of a bygone era have been flushed away for redundant death metal traits any group on the face of the planet can replicate, just thinly veiled by symphonic arrangements that, when removed, expose "Titan" to be just like its brothers: a turd in a tuxedo. And into the trash it goes.