For those unfamiliar with The Cleansing, the band consists of people from the disbanded Usipian, Corpus Mortale and Strangler, among others. Despite of the two guitarists Jeppe Hasseriis and Andreas Lynge having played in Usipian along with vocalist Toke Eld and bassist Martin Rosendahl, the music doesn’t sound much like Usipian.

The music is to some degree Americanized death metal and it often reminds me of Corpus Mortale and Iniquity. Some of this is possibly because Martin did all the vocals on Poisoned Legacy, but also the music does have its share of references to the aforementioned. Just listen to “Ghost Lights” or “Awoken at Gunpoint” and you’ll understand.

The song-writing is above all conventional, but that doesn’t’ make The Cleansing boring. The music is diverse and the Danes are good at making the songs interesting by including many different facets in the music. It doesn’t get trivial and despite of the music being conventional The Cleansing adds a few refreshing inputs along the way.

There’s some very good lead work on most of the songs. This is something that adds nicely to the feel and variety of the music. There’s a nice balance when it come to the fast and slow in the music. The band doesn’t overdo one or the other. I like the disturbing start on “The Domino of Phantom Effects” and actually the whole song is great with its slow and gloomy feel. It’s perhaps also the song that is the most different on the CD.

With Poisoned Legacy The Cleansing doesn’t stride different territory compared to so much else, but for fans of Corpus Mortale, Usipian and Iniquity, like me, Poisoned Legacy is a convincing debut.