Album Reviews

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Kamelot – Poetry for the Poisoned (2010)

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    Three years after releasing “Ghost Opera”, Kamelot is finally back with a very different and ambitious album then ever before. The band steps aside of their traditional Power Metal roots and takes an exploratory journey with progressive elements. This creates a very dark and yet refined release that will most likely please most fans of the band, but will leave some in the dark.

    Our first impression of this album was not completely favorable since we expected something to sound more like older Kamelot releases. But upon exploring our 3rd, 4th, and 5th time we started to appreciate the album from its differences to older releases rather than the similarities. You will find the traditional vocal melodies of Roy, the impressive guitar work of Thomas, and all the other individual elements that make Kamelot a great band, but in different doses and with extra elements that elevate the band’s sound.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Hell Militia - Last Station on the Road to Death (2010)

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    Relentless and unpretentious are two words that immediately came to our minds when writing this review about Hell Militia’s latest effort “Last Station on the Road to Death”. The band features a wide variety of well-known Black Metal musicians of the ever growing French scene, and deserves worldwide attention because of their down-to-the-roots approach to mid-tempo Black Metal that will crush your soul after just a few minutes.

    After their powerful 2005 debut album “Canonisation of the Foul Spirit”, the band showed potential, but the elements were not completely aligned for them. Now, the band shows more musical maturity and a bigger focus on creating a nihilistic sound that never relies on 1000 bmp assaults or cheesy elements to create a sober atmosphere that Black Metal has been characteristic of in its early days.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Tenebrae in Perpetuum / Krohm – Split (2010)

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    Today we got a very raw and nihilistic split from Debemur Morti. Featuring two of the best Atmospheric Raw Black Metal bands of the recent years (unluckily Tenebrae in Perpetuum has decided to split-up). Clocking over 42 minutes of pure unadulterated atmospheric brutality, this split release features three songs from each band, and interestingly enough, almost every song is 7 minutes long (give or take).

    Kicking off the proceedings, we have Krohm and their three songs of very atmospheric and darkly constructed blasphemy. We particularly like how this one man band creates buildup in the first few minutes of each song and then it keeps the tension throughout the end. The vocals are a bit raspy and not extremely raw for us (unlike Tenebrae in Perpetuum), we also like that the music has many ‘traditional’ elements and keeps things on the Black Metal side of things but with a tick atmosphere.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Place of Skulls - As a Dog Returns (2010)

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    Tennessee doomsters Place of Skulls return with another traditional Doom Metal combined with Rock release that will surely take you by surprise thanks to its groovy riffing and brilliant guitar solos. The band formed by Victor Griffin of Death Row/Pentagram fame gives us 9 very interesting tracks that will have you listening to them more than once in order to understand them completely.

    As we listened to “As a Dog Returns”, we quickly identified a single issue that caused some confusion when listening to this album. The ordering of the songs is a bit odd and it tends to cut the flow of the album, creating a very uncomfortable but yet intriguing listening experience. The differences between “The Maker” and “Breath of Life” (tracks 1 and 2) are pretty drastic, since the first song opens things up in a groovy powerful fashion and the second one is more of a slower-paced ‘doomier’ song that kind of kills the flow of this release. This issue also happens further in the album, but if you don’t mind about the flow of a release then this should not be a problem for you.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Arsenic Addiction – An Undertaker’s Lament (2010)

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    With their 2009 release of “Requiem of the Fallen”, the band made a powerful statement that they are a force to be reckoned by combining powerful vocals, crushing guitars, and precise drumming with an equally interesting and interactive Victorian-themed live show. “An Undertaker’s Lament” is the bands latest release where they try to push things one step closer to national (and why not international) recognition.

    Starting with the atmospheric piece “Invocation”, Arsenic Addiction immediately shows considerable improvement when it comes to writing songs and creating catchy melodies within the first two songs in the album (“Lady Death” is the second one). Led by Lady Arsenic’s contrasting clean and growling vocals, the band has grown musically into crafting better songs that showcase her vocal abilities.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Amorphis - Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years (2010)

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    If you’ve been following Infernal Masquerade for a while, you should know that we are one of the biggest Amorphis fans ever. When this release was announced we had big smiles in our heads since after seeing the band perform this classic songs with the ‘latest’ line-up and completely blowing us away, we wanted to have them on studio-quality recording and blast them all day long, since 7 out of the 13 songs in this album are some of our favorites of all time.

    “Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years” features 12 songs (plus one bonus track) that have been re-recorded and somewhat re-arranged to fit the band’s current dynamic sound. These songs are taken from “The Karelian Isthmus”, “Tales from the Thousand Lakes”, and “Elegy” albums.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Nightfall - Astron Black and the Thirty Tyrants (2010)

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    When we where thinking where the hell have we heard of this band before, it immediately hit us that the band had a song (“Black Leather Cult”) in the epic “The Holy Bible” compilation album of Holy Records back in 1996. Fast-forward almost 14 years and, several releases and a brief break up and we have Nighfall back with only one of the original members: Efthimis Karadimas, now only on vocals.

    “Astron Black and the Thirty Tyrants” marks a very impressive release of this Greek band on Metal Blade Records. Since you start listening to this album, you immediately know that it will surely be an interesting experience. With a very interesting Melodic Black/Death Metal sound, the band quickly brings back of some of their older releases on Holy Records, because of the odd combination of powerful riffs, different vocals (clean and growls), and the elevated us of keyboards.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    RattleheaD – Tales from the Gutter (2010)

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    Back in the day when Speed/Thrash Metal was (originally) a thriving genre, we used to have some pretty good bands (that later became really big: Megadeth, Metallica, etc.). If RattleheaD would have been formed in those days, for sure they would have been epic and big, but they probably would have sucked since they wouldn’t have had anybody to steal their sound from.

    Don’t get us wrong, we love old-school music and when a younger band does a great job in emulating past glories of other bands, we are all for it. But this is not the case with RattleheaD, their latest release “Tales from the Gutter” clearly shows why they are not signed and it might be a time to consider a genre change or some drastic changes in their music in order to get really noticed.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Pestifer – Age of Disgrace (2010)

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    Sometimes we are greatly puzzled as why bands like Pestifer don’t have a recording deal, but other shitty ass bands are making crap music and releasing it every year. With the current Technical Death Metal boom, bands are appearing out of nowhere and crushing things up with great musical abilities and solid songwriting.

    “Age of Disgrace” is one of those releases that push the boundaries of Death Metal into the technical realm while maintaining the music fundamentals in place. Pestifer is one of those few bands that focus more in the song-structure department than in the high level of virtuosity a band can fit in one song.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Heretic Soul – Born Into this Plague (2010)

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    In this modern age finding good Death Metal can become quite a hard thing to do, you have all the ‘classic’ bands still releasing good shit like Cannibal Corpse, Immolation, Malevolent Creation, etc. But finding a new band that is worthy to be added to such an impressive Death Metal lineup is hard to so, especially because of all the shitty Deathcore influences that many bands have these days.

    Today we have from Rotting Corpse Records, the first full-length release of the Turkish band Heretic Soul. “Born Into this Plague” is a release that can surely be called extremely ‘traditional’ and nothing out of the ordinary, but who cares, if you are looking for catchy Death Metal, then look no further since Heretic Soul is the band for you.

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