The Gospel by rebornwithfire | Review

Florida death metal has a new preacher!

Brian Elliott spent about a decade producing and engineering at Erik Rutan's Mana Recording Studios before leaving the industry to pastor a church. rebornwithfire, his one-man project out of Tampa, brings those two lives together, and its debut album The Gospel carries the whole story of Scripture from the garden to the new creation in under twenty-five minutes, and what a glorious, brutal, caveman-chuggalug-fueled twenty-five minutes it is. 

"The Tears of Eden" opens with harmonious guitar sweeps and soft acoustic chord progressions that set out on a steady, somber march, reminiscent of a Metallica ballad. A piercing solo shows off Elliott's technical prowess, and the mix is highly impressive, with room for every layer to breathe. Brian wrote this instrumental with his wife Marianne, who plays the acoustic, and the title tells you what you're hearing: a lament for the garden just before the flaming sword seals the gate. It’s a beautiful introduction to a brutal, intense record.

"The Broken Image" lets out a pummeling roar, and we are cast from the Fall of Man into the dissonant chaos and wrath outside Eden. The lyrics begin "formed from the dust / in the image of our Creator," then "a lie from a serpent's tongue" slips in, and the song keeps falling. Abel's blood stains the ground and violence fills the earth. Then Elliott works through Romans 1 nearly line by line: "The wise became fools / trading truth for lies." Classic brutal death metal carries the track until the final stretch, where the song turns experimental and progressive and starts to skip like a broken record. It’s our endless cycles of sin, rendered in sound. Paul's cry from Romans 7 finally breaks the loop: "Wretched man that I am / who will deliver me?"

"The Son of Man" keeps up the brutal, progressive pummeling, and like the track before it, works groovy, chugging passages into the assault. Picture Bolt Thrower getting involved with a slam band. The lyrics put the disciples' question from the storm-tossed boat to the listener: "Who is this / that demons flee / at the sound of His voice?" Once again, rebornwithfire transforms a song at its conclusion to land the point, this time giving way to open praise. Jesus told the Pharisees that if His disciples went quiet, the stones would cry out. Elliott turns that into a command: "Don't let a rock take Your place / give Him praise."

"The Redemption" is the standout for me, and Elliott himself points new listeners there first. Brutal, whipping death metal comes studded with technical breakdowns, at times sinking into a cavernous atmosphere. Then the song transforms into high-octane melodic choirs that glint and glitter through the grit, with Marianne adding vocals. The lyrics climb Golgotha through John the Baptist's "Behold the Lamb of God" and a near-verbatim reading of Isaiah 53. Sonically, the track shows that our redemption meets us in the chaos and devastation of this world, amid sinister forces beyond our mortal plane. The tension never slackens, even down into the tomb where "the light of life" lies "enclosed in darkness," until one word breaks out: "RESURRECTION."

The title track rides groovy bass lines that let crushing chords enter over them, then builds into an epic breakdown that is melodic and crushing at once. Having preached the whole story, Elliott makes the altar call: "The end is near / let go of your sin / repent and be saved." He follows with Revelation's promise of a city with no need for the sun, because "His light will warm us." Then the acoustic progression from "The Tears of Eden" returns, Marianne's guitar once more. The road out of Eden turns out to lead back in. Revelation 21 promises that God will wipe away every tear, and The Gospel closes by doing exactly that to the tears it opened with.

Tampa gave the world Deicide. Now it has a death metal record that ends at an empty tomb, made by a man who spent his studio years in the room behind much of Cannibal Corpse's modern catalog. The Gospel carries that Florida lineage into the Christian extreme metal tradition Mortification and Living Sacrifice built in the early '90s, and anyone who comes for theology with teeth will find the same conviction here, delivered through death metal.

Elliott's bio promises music "brutal without losing purpose," and he delivers on both halves. The record spends long, punishing stretches in the Fall and lets that weight hit as hard as death metal can, because the cross means more once you've felt what it answers. Fans of Christian death metal need to hear this one right now.