Recorded at Soundlodge in Leer between May and June 2006, straight after a European tour with Bolt Thrower, produced by the band with Jörg Uken and released by Metal Blade on 20 October 2006, the Dutch quartet with six albums behind it tore a large part of the blast beats out of its seventh and bolted groove and melody into their place, and came out with the best production it had yet been given. The reduction was deliberate. The result was not a softening.
The line-up is a document of a moment. Henri Sattler sings and plays guitar, Isaac Delahaye plays lead guitar, Henk Zinger bass and Ariën van Weesenbeek drums. The album sits between The Lair of the White Worm of 2004 and Passiondale of 2009, and a limited edition carried a DVD of the band's Summer Breeze set from 2005.
The architecture of God Dethroned on this record is a Dutch death metal engine refitted for mid-tempo work: the double kick still drives, but the riffs are given room to swing, and synthesizers and keyboards are laid underneath for atmosphere rather than ornament. Delahaye's leads are the most conspicuous change. They shear through the rhythm guitars with a melodic precision the band had not shown before, like a scalpel through a cured hide, and they lift the stronger songs from good to memorable.
The production is clean and dense without being sterile, and it gives the bass and the drums a weight that the earlier records, faster and rougher, never quite captured. Heavier or softer than what came before? The album never settles it. Sattler himself, interviewed by Metal Covenant in July 2009, later called it "an album which was too melodic and clean". The record argues against its own author: the melody is the reason it endures.
"Faithless" is a thirty six second overture. "Hating Life" follows and tears the overture's door off its hinges, a fast song with a chorus built to be shouted back, and "2014" keeps the tempo up while letting the melody lead. "On Wings of Pestilence" is the first summit, orchestral synthesizers spread beneath a riff that grinds forward like a tracked vehicle across a cratered field.
The record argues against its own author: the melody is the reason it endures.
"Typhoid Mary" is the standout, a mid-paced march with the gait of their own "Under a Silver Moon", cold in its restraint and the clearest proof that cutting the blast beats sharpened the songwriting rather than blunting it. "Away from Emptiness" gives Delahaye an instrumental space for a solo of real feeling, and "Fail to Exist" closes on melody.
The limit lies in the middle of the running order. "Falling Down" is the weakest song on the album, competent and forgettable, and around it the mid-tempo template repeats closely enough that two or three tracks lose their individual outline. The lyrics, too, remain the least developed element of the record, serviceable where the music is precise.
The album also explains what followed. The band toured it as main support to Vader, and the mid-tempo songs written for this record proved built for those stages, where the groove carries further than the blast. Three years later Passiondale turned the same melodic approach toward a concept, the trenches of the First World War, and much of what made that record cohere was first tested here. The Toxic Touch is the hinge between the older, faster God Dethroned and the band that found a subject large enough for its melodies, and it should be heard as such rather than as a pause.
For the listener who values Dutch death metal for its riff craft rather than its velocity, The Toxic Touch is among the most rewarding records in the band's catalogue, and "Typhoid Mary" and "On Wings of Pestilence" belong on any serious selection of their work. For the listener who wants the blast beats of the nineties, the album will read as a band easing off. It is better understood as a band taking aim.