Black Breath-Sentenced To Life

I honestly can't understand the connection between the pathetically crafted album art and the album title, but as long as the music is good, I couldn't care less. Black Breath are nothing like like what you've heard before this year. Well, technically they are, but when bits and fragmants of differentiating sounds get sewn together in an orgy of malevolant intesity. ''Sentenced To Life'' subsumes such a vast abundance of musical styles that at first, it wouldn't be a shock if one wouldn't be able to classify this. Fortunately, I was warned before I listened to the album, so the riffs and complication of variation didn't come as a complete surprise. If we are to classy them then the best way would be to call them death/thrash/crossover/punk, which just isn't easy to spell out.

The riffs come in a superb abundance, from clusters of death/thrash insanity, to straightforward death metal tremolos that grind you up, to crushing crossover riffs, all presented to the listener with an intense punk attitude in the background. I just love how the riffs teem and overflow with dense energy, ready to be exposed with a sudden impact of brutality. The music just never bores you, with such variety and little nuances. The songs are all kept at a short length and thus have been abridgened in order to maintain the same level of dynamics through the whole album. And I have to say, the lack of lenght has indeed increased the rate of effectiveness and freshness since the album stops at thirty-two minutes. Some tracks may slightly stray from the pervasive path of pure, crushing and plain assault of riffage. ''Endless Corpse'' is a different tune, dealing more doom than say punk or even death, with its stomping mid-pave moments, brooding melodies and only handful amount of energy. Most tracks go with a steady thrash influence lingering at the back for the most part, and the crushing energy of thrash metal only empasizes the raw power of the album. Luckily death, thrash, punk  and crossover are the only styles prevalent on this album, or else we would had a real hard time trying to comprehend things, getting hit with a different weapon everytime we would turn to understand what had struck us previously.

The vocals are the key to the maintaining the energy here. I can't quite relate the vocalist to any of the singers I know, but he sounds like a frantic death/thrasher with a lot of punk attitude and furious barking most of the time, like the riffs. ''Sentenced To Life'' would not have been the same relentlessly crushing and crazed monster if it weren't for the vocals, guiding the riffs furiously.I come to cunclusion that Black Breath have indeed created something that's different even though, the originality can only boast the quality until so much. Massive Assault, probably followed a similar path to Black Breath, only leaning more on the death side and thus pushing the thrash influence aside. Either way, Black Breath's sophomore is for fans of frantic, frenzied death/thrash that also rots of punk and hardcore to provide that amazing attitude and energy. And the album is probably another good example of the ''Music doesen't have to depend on the artwork'' formula.

Highlights:
Doomed
Home Of The Grave
Mother Abyss

Rating: 89%

Hyborian Steel-Blood, Steel And Glory

After dealing with waves of pervasive death and thrash metal bands, I thought I'd try something different. No doubt, Hyborian Steel provided me with such a thing. Hyborian combine the heroicism of power metal with the ridicolous jumpiness of heavy metal in order to form ''Epic Power Metal'', something which you don't see quite often. Indeed at first, ''Blood, Steel and Glory'' had an amazingly epic feel, roaming over the warfaric lyrics and atmosphere to add additional spunk. Repeatedly slitening to this record enables the listener to finally comprehend the atmopshere, and finally come to cunclusion that Hyborian Steel's style is also quite pervasive, but it's just so fun to toy with that one can simply not care.

The music reflects the lyrics quite excellently, providing both a heroic and barbaric sound for the listener to acquire. The vocals, which may seem irritative and annoying at first actually make up the key bases of the album, adding a tremendous backbone to the album, and thus not only allowing the riffs to sound epic, but also giving omnipotency to the music to increase effectiveness during accents. Most of the songs deal around more epic and comprehensible structures, covering the music with thick epicness and decorating the riffs with harmonically inclining lead sections. So many guitars gather around in the solos that the music turns into ''happy metal'' all of a sudden, the climax of epicness. Of course, nobody said that the music would be all cakes and lollipop. ''Acqilonian Battlecry'' leans slightly towards the more barbaric side of power metal, with its striking riffs, herpic breakdowns and thanks to the atmosphere which acts like a battle scene. But the real track that attains the barbaric sound is ''the Mountain Of Crom'', a vicious track it is, especially during its first half, the song purely concentrates on all things savage and warfaric about power metal. After some time, the spikes of savagery do melt down slightly, but I could only care. The band have also put a versatike cover of Cirith Ungol's ''War Eternal'', that just follows a very similar path as the band.

The vocals are annoying even though they are supportive, and that's all I can point out. The delivery of the music on ''Blood, Steel and Glory'' is magnificent, especially during the first few songs. If you are hunting for something different than the widespread sound of death, thrash and black, then I can't seem to understand why you wouldn't want this album. Safely combines power with heavy, supports the structure and accent at all times, provides an epic atmosphere and inserts in so much melody that sometimes I cease to comprehend the mash up of notes. A new wave of heavy metal bands are coming your way, and with bands such as Midnight and Hyborian Steel leading the front row, there's no stopping this contemptous wave of invading heavy metal monsters.

Highlights:
Aquilonian Battlecry
The Mountain of Crom
The Black Hand Of Set
(The Cirith Ungol cover is great too but not an original)

Rating: 83,5%

Decaying-Encirclement

When I first thought of DM from Finland, the magnificent scene that held bands like Abhorrence, Demigod or Convulse came to mind, and I have to admit that I had high hopes for this album, especially since Finland hasn't delivered outstanding metal this year. Having high hopes Decaying 's Encirclement was a bad mistake simply because it didn't satisfy my thirst for old school Finish DM. Though I think It would be inconvenient for me to say that this album was a terrible failure. In fact, Encirclement has a considerably solid structure and a steady barrage of thrashy OSDM riffage striking with a fair amount of power and freshness, sufficient to keep the listener entertained the whole way through.

The album obviously doesen't come with any striking features of its own and unfortunately lacks the same frenzied and raw feeling that was highly pervasive in old school Finnish DM bands. It cant be denied that at times the band tries to sound like their fellow countrymen especially with the frequent usage of glooming, even doomy melodies during mellow passages and more spacious sections on the album, whenever the band feels like attaining some atmosphere and ambiance to give a sort of old school feel. These kinds of sinister, brooding melodies have ringed in my ears for quite some time from either Swedish or Finish bands, and I am to be fully accurate than I must say that doomy melodies are a bit inconvenient to be used in such a straightforward and clear album. They have tried to immitate their forfathers and thus have taken a risk that ended in a derivative result. Fortunately, the plain, compelling and hard-hitting riifs restore the album to full health with ease, and the atmospheric touch on the techy Pestilence - esque riffage provides the album with a much needed unique sound in contrast to other derivatively unoriginal death metal bands.

The Van Drunnen-esque vocal stylings never fail to amuse me, no matter how many times they are repeated. And the certain Pestilence vibe only emphasises the enchanting old school feeling. "Initiation" is the perfect mid-paced, grooving and forlorn OSDM track here. It's sufficiently short and the riffs randomly switch between groovy yet catchy melodies and cruwshing tremolo strikes, still going with a steady thrash influence. "Artillery Barrage" is even more excellent, a crushing and plain track with furoious death thrash riffs spawning like zombies emerging out of nowhere. Just like msost songs, it hares vividly resemblance to Pestilence's debut and sophomore, perfectly consummating a thrashy and catchy sound even with some technical proficiency. The technically driven riffs even take a certain trail of proggression when left in open space. During the more spacious sections of album, the level of melody and technical profiency increases at velocious rate, and the true face of musicianship begins to unfold as the guitarists display a wide range of grooving and swaggering riffs both crushing and melodic yet still being able to sound as plain and straightforward as possible.

The album draws immense influences from both Pestilence and Bolt Thrower, having attained a sound that feels just like a cross between the imperatives of the two. ''Encirclement'' includes a vast number of riffs, taken and spread out to populate the lenghtly songs. While it may sound imitative, once you take a closer look, you'll see that the derivation is actually a cool feature to add, since no DM fan should do without Bolt Thrower or Pestilence. I may say in relief that this is the most plain DM release I've heard all year, with almost no density or thickness production wise, I can safely acquire this album and let it sorround and conquer me, because I know that no matter what, I will enjoy the plain sound.

Highlights:
Artillery Barrage
Battle Of The Somme
The Hell Of Verdun


Rating: 87%

Demonic Slaughter-Dark Essence EP

I'm not much into black metal, but somehow Demonic Slaughter's ''Dark Essence'' EP seemed surprisingly appealing to me at first. Though after a couple of listens I wasn't completely satisfied with my result, I still enjoyed certain moments of darkened epicness and glory on the album. It turns out that the band just kept releasing albums from the moment they were formed, and their latest album was the 2011 ''Revelations Of Death''. This EP is yet to be turned into an album, but for know we'll have to amuse ourselves with an un-sufficient amount of black metal that really doesen't count as original.

''Dark Essence'' strikes the same as any other typical black metal record, but strangely turns unto more abrupt directions from time to time. The riffing is pretty classic black metal, with heavy usage of dense, chaotic chord and tremolo picking to add that incredible boast of atmosphere, naturally. The vocals are much less raspier than any tupical one of its kind and adds a death metal edge to the album at times, when wildly supported by the barrages of tremolo bursts. The one really cool thing about the EP, is that it can perfectly attain a classic, dark, thick atmosphere, something that's not exactly too epic or heroic, or even clear. For the most part, the album is driven savagely with tremolo bursts and grotesque gutturals, roaming everywhere, but in songs like ''Black Storm Invocation'', the music may tend to change main aspects in order to achieve doomy ambients and a very sinister atmosphere. ''Inner-Self Transfiguration'' is an incredibly hard-hitting yet almost infinetely numbing track, it blasts at full speed until the very end, spreading chaos aswel as brutally pulverising the listener with its crushing tremolo/chord hybrids. A very stellar track it is, though unfortunately all the other songs easily fall short of reaching the same attitude as itself.

''Inner-Self Transfiguration'' boasts the album with an immediate blow, instead of increasing the EP's overall quality as fragmants, little by little, just like the other four tracks that can be considered proper songs. After ''Into The Unknown'', which follows pretty much where the previous track left, the EP begins to lose its accuracy in entertaining you adn ultimately, its efficiency. Though while the ride lasts, the EP could be quite entertaining if you are really into black metal, or even darker sub-genres of death metal. I hope that ''Dark Essence'' comes with some severe improvements when it turns into an album, because if it doesen't, I'm not going to get it. For know, I can't call this a bad thing, nor can I call it an excellent album. All I can say is that it keeps channeling in my mind between decen and awesome.

Highlights
Inner-Self Transfiguration
Into The Unknown

Rating: 80%

Malfeitor-Dum Morior Orior

Malfeitor has caught more than just my attention with their style, country and most importantly, their music. They consist of ex members of OSSDM monsters like Egypt or the mighty Excruciate and the moment I saw that, I fell in deperate need to obtain this album. Apparently they've been around for over 20 years and have finally released their debut album, ''Dum Morior Orior''. Thankfully, Hellthrasher Productions have provided me with a promotional copy, and I was absolutely pumped about the upcoming experience of OSSDM. And the album has striked me down with a very expected blow, but there were some peculiar twists which I had not quite apprehended.

''Dum Morior Orior'' is a vigorous piece of tormenting Swedish death metal, played in almost the exact vein of forfathers and fellow countrymen Entombed, Dismember or Grave. Though the album certainly did come with a few twists of its own that I had not included in the ''Upcoming Assaults'' list. While I had expected a more doomy, depressing atmosphere to overwhelm me, the riffs came quite the oppoiste as they were rabid tremolo bursts and shatteringly brutal chughs with bits and pieces of technical glimpses scattered here and there. When I mean brutal, I certainly don't mean the same pervasive and boring sound created by brutal death metallers. I mena real riffs, with striking energy and comprehensible structures and patters followed easily, and thus still very crushing and intricate. The riffs channel in between thrashy, chord-driven stompers and descending tremolo pickings that follow a more distinct trail, and get constantly refreshed in dynamics with the multiple usage of drum chokes and other percussion tricks that go pretty well with the album.

There is no great separation between the songs, besides a few spot-on highlights that support different structure and sound. All the tracks and outrageously vigorous and brutally constructed, but unfortunatey there's little that tells them apart. ''Exile From Sanity'' or ''When The Last Breath Fades'' are very straightforward and versatile tracks, filled with a tons of muted tremolo progression and conspicous open-string riffing along with a small dose of Swedish grooving to build up the backbone of the anatomy. The thing that I loved about ''Dum Morior Orior'' is that it's like train of pounding brutality that never ceases in speed. There may be mid-paced sections that show up every once in a while, but the abhorrently tremolo-driven riffs are always non-stop and absolutely ferocious and even sometimes catchy, at that. Even the vocals which seem to be rather chaotic and less expolited in the delivery, are full of energy and carry immense spunk to support the rest of the song. This effect may be numbing after a while, but it's damn worth it if you want some great Swedeath.

The melodious sections are fairly limited to only a handful on this album, which is a saddening thing, because I can never think of my Swedeath heroes Emtombed or Dismember without a blood-chilling groove frequently appearing in the background and thus bringing up some immense atmosphere to the album. There riffs are usually muffled and have an old-school vibe to them, so the atmosphere is usually attained easily. But overall, once you consider the album as a whole, it becomes a great gem in your eyes and earns, atleast for fans of Swedeath, high ranks, especially when you put into consideration the amount of good death metal bands that have appeared this year so far. The songs are hard to separate, so I can't really point out obvious highlights, but all tracks are almost equally well composed so it feels like the highlight of the album, is the album itself. ''Dum Morior Orior'' could have been more eccentric and could have used some more ambience, but other then that, I wish you a good headbang.

Highlights:
And The Sky Turned To Rage
Rolling With Corpses
Soujourn Hell
When The Last Breath Fades

Rating: 90%

Heretique-Ore Veritatis

Hailing from Poland, a country that ought to be known better for its waves of monstrous OSDM bands, Heretique produce some fairly fresh blackened death/thrash. ''Ore Veritatis'' is a hybrid of death, thrash and black metal, churning all three of them for a perfectly balanced mixture. Horrid, who had come up with one of the better examples of the this sub-genre, sound genuinely better than Heretique. Even though Heretique doesen't manage to be as sordid or filthy as Horrid, they still create an album worth listenening if you entirely devote yourself to the heaviness and thrashiness of the sub-genre.

I don't know I can still bare the same type of riffage played over and over, battering against my ear drums monotonously. I must really love my metal. Though I must also not that ''Ore Veritatis'' is far from complete repetetiveness. If the truth be told, ''Ore Veritatis'' has absolutely sordid and hefty moments of pure battering thrash madness and stomping death/thrash brilliance. The main thing that I love about this album is that it randomly swiches between all three sub-genres that it uses in the mixture, so the riffs range from crushing and spiky death/thrash chokes that pierce and shatter and epic black metal tremolo descendage, enabling the listener to actually enjoy the widespread riffage because the spectrum of variations is so wide and well-decorated with melodic solos. The modern sound is undeniable, but when the riffs are quality and there is a venemous atmosphere shadowing the riffs, one could hardly care. The atmosphere reaches its climax when clean guitar tones swagger around the hefty riffage and spacious tremolo bursts rage uncontrolled, frenzied by the deafening vocal delivery.

There is really nothing else that could be said about ''Ore Veritatis''. It's crushing, techy, epic and atmosphreic at times, so shortly, it combines everything good about black, death and thrash, sipmlifies it, and then puts it all into one package. Every track is simple, but crushing in its own way, so overall ''Ore Veritatis'' is a bloody decent album.

Highlights:
Rain Of Fire
Lashing And Contempt
Tribe

Rating: 86%

Undergang-Til Døden Os Skiller

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has a great amount of love for Scandinavian death metal, especially since some of the best death metal scenes come from these filthy northerners. Denmark, however is not a scene which has mustered a large metal scene, atleast compared to the other Scandinavian monsters like Finland or Sweden. Undergang, must some up greatly to the short list of remarkable Danish bands, alongside Artillery and Invocator. Undergang's material is some of the filthiest, doomiest material I've heard in quite some time. Even Macabra, whose fantastic brand of old school death metal was some of the freshest of its kind, falls short in front of Undergang's uncontrollably eclipsed sophomore.

If you are looking for filthy, macabra and abnormally grotesque, look no further then this. The riffs are just what you may expect from a filthy, muddy death/doom album that draws roots from usual suspects. The production is unbelievably murky and torn apart, blistered on multiple occasions, causing the album to sound as disordered and cryptic as possible. The stench of the rotting old school death/doom tone is there aswel, polluting and contaminating the album impetously. With such obvious tone manupulations, the album exposes incredibly low and degraded tones outside. The tone and production sickness is the absolute imperative of death/doom, and since Undergang have passed the hard part of the test fluently with ease, the second part comes as easy and cutting butter. The riffs are usually Incantation-esque tremolo picking, though there is a sufficient number of grooving thrashing, randomly churning with the outrageous tremolo bursts. The usage of palm mutes is also frequent, as it gives the feeling of a decaying zombie eagerly prowling you, as if in a horrendous nightmare.

While you may expect the tempo changes to be rather less various, it is indeed quite the opposite. Sure, ''Til Døden Os Skiller'' has many of its riffs spread out densely and gloomingly but there is also a more dynamic side of the spectrum, one which shows good prevalence throughout the whole album. The occasional double-bass and blast beats with sordid and invidiously fierce riffing combinations on ''Strangularet'' and ''Ormeorgie'' are perfectly done batterers that work even better with a frequent change in tempo, when the drummer decides to choke the thunderous and concise strikes of the palm mutes. Technical moments can also be witnessed during the faster sequences of the album, though these are only groovy riffs with some open note playing, and tend to happen at seldom. The vocals are scary good. They lay hidden admist all the overwhelmingly heavy riffage and battering drums, so they aren't quite audiable. The vocal style is like a very deep, grindy Pillard vocal styling, often heard better when the hoarse growls come, during bridge sections or doomy passages.

I would not have liked Undergang as much as I do if it didn't have the chaotic and murky atmosphere and muffled production that it has. As I said, the production is absolutely crucial on an album like this, even mandatory when the band ventures into doomier territory like on ''Radden Messe'' or the ending sequence on ''Nar Bornene Dor'' (I apologise for incorrectly spelling those). Undergang shows a lot of promise as I will also get on their previously released effort, which has also been quite praised. The fithiness that this album has is immense, and probably the most crucial factor aswel. With its horrific album art, terrifying riffage and ridicolous but grim intros, ''Til Døden Os Skiller'' could have easily been the theme music to an 80's horror film. It's a solid album, get dirty now by purchasing it.


Highlights:
Kadavermarch
Strangularet
Til Døden Os Skiller

Rating: 90%

Witchtrap-Vengeance Is My Name

I would be wrong to say that Witchtrap play in the exact vein of countless black/thrash bands. Their style more fun to toy around with, bringing forth influences mainly from early speed metal bands, a lot like recent bands such as Deathhammer and Midnight. Because I was expecting a more straightforward aggressive black/thrash sound, I approached the album with a bit of anticipation because admittedly, I had never heard of the band before. Overall ''Vengeance Is My Name'' is still nothing that I've never heard of before, but it was morbid curiosity and avarice which drove me towards the album.

Although many of the stylings are styles that have been repeated over and over with simplistic yet catchy riffage, the album still provides a fair amount of enterntainment, despite monotonous effect that it appies on the listener after several listens. If there is something that will save the album from complete repetetiveness and lack of variety, it's the catchiness. The riffs are fast yet stable but they are ridicolously catchy in their own way. The intro riffs from ''Damned To The Core'' is an astonishingly decent display of catchiness and energy with a more melodious and pessimistic feel than many other riffs on the record. The mid paced verse-chorus cruncher on ''Queen Of Hell'' is a stomping heavy and blithe track that can be considered a good and plain type of its kind.  ''Venomous Breath'' also holds the listeners attention for as long as its well-constructed, techy intro riff can go. So ''Vengeance Is My Name'' actually has a variety of fun riffage spread in a dim spectrum, though unfortunately the manifestation of the indulgent riffage is much less widespread than the typical ones.

The one big gap on ''Vengeance Is My Name'' is the lack of proper atmosphere and ambiance which is usually much more common in other black/thrash acts. In contrast to bands like Ketzer or Deathhammer, Witchtrap doesen't keep the atmosphere department as the main focal point. In fact, it wouldn't be false to say that there isn't even an atmosphere department, something that I would love to drown in. It's obvious that band is trying to sound as callous and ominiously evil as possible, though in my opinion their strongest bet in achieving that is through concentration on the vocal department, which isn't even that sordid or blasphemously dark. They have a strong resemblance to Millie Petrozza in his earlier days, sounding a bit like Kreator when the riffs behind get heavier and thrashier. Tracks like ''Metal'' or the title track are dispicably sordid, compared to the other tracks. They have faster, chunkier riffage and the deliverance is quite well done, especially when the vocals feel like they have more backbone and the riffs are deployed upon a more monolithic structure.

Sinister and evil may not the thing on ''Vengeance Is My Name'', but it certainly is catchy and notably groovy. The riffs on  this album are not bad, but clearly, the quality riffage needs increase in number if they are to boast the overall convenience in characteristics. There is a fine line between the more monotonous riffage and the riffs that stand-out better than the others, and all Witchtrap has to do is add more men to the weaker side. Atmosphere wouldn't kill too, especially when the music is somehow connected to black metal, which is a genre obviously well-known for its epic aand atmspherric incursions. Though depite these, ''Vengeance Is My Name'' can be an entertaining listen from time time, and even more enjoyable if you don't mind repetetiveness.

Highlights:
Damned To The Core
Metal
I'll Take Your Head

Rating: 83%