Woe Of Tyrants – Threnody (2010)

In the vein of Black Dahlia Murder and such bands today we have Woe Of Tyrants, an American band that has great potential. “Threnody” is the band’s 3rd full-length album, and starts very similar to whatever bands like BDM sound like, but the album takes a monster transformation with the sixth song called “Bloodsmear” into a brilliant Melodic Death Metal band that sounds like few others.

As the first five songs where passing, we were about to chalk up this release to another BDM sounding band that does not offer much in terms of innovation, but boy we where wrong. The first songs feature furious Death Metal with some slightly impressive technical aspects, but then the music gets very melodic with the use of lush keyboards, brilliant rhythmical parts and blasting solos.

Woe Of Tyrants is obviously a very talented band, but from the first songs of this album they sounded pretty dull and clone-like, after that they redeem themselves with some amazing Melodic Death Metal songs. Hailing from Ohio, the band has clear American modern Death Metal influences, but their sound in the last few songs is way superior to that.

With fast paced guitar melodies and solos, the band will surely win over all fans of bands similar to Dark Tranquility and such, only if they can make it over the first dull songs. They do have solos and nice parts but they are nothing to call home about. We don’t know if the band has done this ‘mid album change’ in their previous releases but it works wonders for patient people that don’t make judgments until the album is done.

The harsh vocals are very brutal and more into the pure Death Metal sound, but they work very nicely with the more melodic aspect of the bands music. The guitar work is stellar when they do the solos and in overall pretty decent. The drumming is relentless and yet very well distributed, keeping the pace of the music as fast as possible when needed.

Out of all the American band’s we review that feature a Melodic DM sound that rivals the traditional Swedish sound, we have to say that Woe Of Tyrants is one of the best out there. However, the band needs a bit more work in their music to be top notch since there are a high percentage of recycled riffs through the album, and even two songs “Tempting The Wretch” and “Bloodsmear” almost start identically.

If you are bored with linear bands like BDM, then go and get this release since it will provide enough brutal tracks to mosh for a while and then sit down, relax, and enjoy the rest of album with the more melodic songs.

Release: April 13th, 2010

Country: USA