Of the Sun - Before a Human Path EP

Artist: Of the Sun
Release Title: Before a Human Path EP
Year: 2017
Label: Self-Released/Independent
Genre: Southern Progressive Metal
Tracklisting:
1. The Tightrope Mile
2. Nebulamorphous
3. Cantos
4. A Soliloquy
5. The Limbless God

Continuing to expand their brand, Texas-based modern metallers Of the Sun have sought out to refine and hone their self-described southern progressive metal tag that has allowed them to expand their standings in the local scene with more live dates and releases. Now fully cementing their touch, the three-piece prepares their self-released sophomore EP on April 14, 2017.

Offering their trademark style to the fullest, the album comes across as the truest culmination of their self-imposed genre tag with this offering. The main juxtaposition of the album is the progressive label, offering up a strong series of complex, technical riffing that offers plenty to like here, from sweeping atmospheric patterns to challenging math/metal styles and even featuring crushing grooves to offset these prominent elements. Likewise, the fact that these usually accompany that twangy style of Southern-tinged groove metal, the overall combination of influences is incredibly well-detailed and busy as the tracks usually offer varied exposure to each element. Due to the hefty track times for these few tracks, the ability to sweep it all together into these lengthy sojourns offers this one plenty of time to feature these varied elements as the thick grooves and airy post-metal breakdowns are featured prominently even though that, in the end, is the albums’ main weakness. The fact that this one is so busy and scattershot with its approach, containing so many varied and seemingly disparate elements into each and every track not only makes this one seem far longer than it really is but also too sonically varied to be really enjoyable as nothing is really cohesively conjoined all that well. This gives the feeling of being overlong for the sake of being able to cram all these influences together, and this could really use some shortening. Otherwise, there’s still some enjoyable elements here.

While it does have some problems with all the different elements present in this one being thrown together into a haphazard blender, there’s still some solid, likable moments here with their obvious technical skills and valid genre mash-ups that this one serves as a solid if unessential release for fans of modern metal in general.

Score: 66/100

Does it sound good? Order it from here:
https://noiseofthesun.bandcamp.com/album/before-a-human-path

Desecrate the Faith - Unholy Infestation

Artist: Desecrate the Faith
Release Title: Unholy Infestation
Year: 2017
Label: Comatose Music
Genre: Brutal Death Metal
Tracklisting:
1. Daemones Nos Ave Satanas
2. Predatory Impalement
3. Malignant Divinity
4. Shrine of Enmity
5. Unholy Infestation
6. Magna Daemonia
7. Ceremonial Invocation
8. Sacrilege Reborn
9. Angel Eater
10. Septic Womb
11. Ascension of Belial
12. Let Us Burn (The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit)

Getting their true sound unleashed, Texas-based death metallers Desecrate the Faith have brought a grand state of intense old-school elements into their sound that brings along unrelenting blasphemies and technical style riffs alongside merciless blast beats and putrid guttural vocals. With a three-year gap following their debut, the group’s sophomore effort was released March 3, 2017 on Comatose Records.

Getting into the main drive of the album, this one rather easily becomes a series of vicious and charging display of material that maintains it’s old-school leanings. There’s a propensity towards ferocious, deep churning riff-work and a sense of uncaged intensity that creates a whirlwind of dynamic rhythms through the fast-paced tempos. Bringing the intensity rather nicely with the ability to mix and match the furious rhythms alongside pounding drum-work and driving bass-lines, there’s an effectively massive and organic sound featured throughout here that serves the majority of the album exceptionally well. When it eases off from this charging atmosphere, it gets replaced with a stellar onslaught of mid-tempo chugging offset by complex challenging rhythms and technical riff-work that really creates the proper dynamic and intriguing work throughout here that makes for a truly engrossing and blistering approach that serves this one quite nicely. From the outset, this multifaceted approach works incredibly well at staging tight, intense and ferocious work that owes as much to the classic sense of the genre as well as the more brutal elements featured within here, and it makes for a wholly engrossing and engaging experience. It runs a tad too long for its own good as the album feels like a few songs could’ve been clipped slightly and not really lost much at all, but overall there’s still quite a lot of impressive work here.

Managing to focus on so many quality and impressive elements as this one does, it really generates the kind of multifaceted approach that comes from so many impressive features here that it manages to appeal to both fans of highly technical brutal death metal or brutality-laced classic death metal as well.

Score: 92/100

Does it sound good? Order it from here:
https://desecratethefaith.bandcamp.com/album/unholy-infestation

Impure Devotion - Raping the God Privileged Flesh EP

Artist: Impure Devotion
Release Title: Raping the God Privileged Flesh EP
Year: 2014
Label: Self-Released/Independent
Genre: Black'n'Roll
Tracklisting:
1. Lusting for Lilith
2. Locusts of the Omen's Wake
3. Raping the God Privileged Flesh
4. Entombed in Silent Eternity
5. 5.
6. Sluts of Hell (Nattefrost cover)

Storming out of the underground, Texas-based punk/black’n’rollers Impure Devotion have come together to bring out the exceptionally depraved and demented sounds they crave that gets explored quite adamantly throughout this piece. Representing their first professional release, the bands’ debut EP was originally released December 11, 2014.

Featuring a rather raw and garbled approach, the band certainly steps out in the spotlight with a fierce and fiery first assault that’s quite decent at its overall style. The main genesis to be found here is the filthy, thrashing riff-work that carries out the same dirty, high-energy style and content generally featured in a raucous, simplistic manner that really exposes their punk leanings due to the overall simple-minded nature of the material. This rattling, ferocious material gets plenty of work here over the pounding drumming and fierce vocal work that contains a rather high amount of engaging rhythms full of explosive thrash and punk leanings, and when it’s then taken a step further with the low-fi, ultra-raw and near-garage-band quality production here it makes this all the more frantic and intense. Still, that production is going to be a major hurdle to overcome as the vast majority of the album blends into an indecipherable blur of thrashing guitar noise and thudding drumming which is pretty much what the entire album as a whole consists of. There’s not a whole lot of differences in the tracks which gets emphasized by the simple-minded nature of what’s on offer, and basically that all comes down to lower this one somewhat. Even with these flaws, though, it’s still got quite a lot to like at times.

Despite a few minor missteps that hold it back, the main part of this one offers up enough to like here in terms of raucous energy and intensity that manages to generate enough interest for those that can appreciate this kind of style while those that look for more professional output in the music should heed caution.

Score: 60/100

Does it sound good? Order it from here:
https://impuredevotion.bandcamp.com/releases

Eternal Champion - The Armor of Ire

Artist: Eternal Champion
Release Title: The Armor of Ire
Year: 2016
Label: No Remorse Records
Genre: Epic Heavy Metal
Tracklisting:
1. I Am the Hammer
2. The Armor of Ire
3. The Last King of Pictdom
4. Blood Ice
5. The Cold Sword
6. Invoker
7. Sing a Last Song of Valdese
8. Shade Gate

Formed just in 2012, Texas-based epic heavy metallers Eternal Champion quickly took on the tone and feel of the classic heavy metal sound from the 80s which helps to tie in their connection to Michael Moorcock's high fantasy series of the same name. With the album being the first recorded output of third guitarist Nujon Powers, the group finally prepares its debut full-length September 27, 2016 on No Remorse Records.

There’s not a whole lot about this one as immediately from the start, the band is clearly well-suited for their brand of old-school worshipping of traditionally-minded epic heavy metal. There’s plenty of beefy, sturdy trad-influenced riff-work at play here with the swirling melodic rhythms that gallop along at quite a steady pace here with the album’s preference for the bouncy mid-tempo race. This has the effective quality of leaving it feeling warm and quite luscious which is quite a usual ploy in this genre that manages to effectively evoke the melodic aesthetics from that style as it’s so familiar for the most part that there’s little doubt about its influences being derived wholeheartedly along the way. That leads into the main feature problem about this one as the wholly simplistic manner of the rhythms that it makes for way too close a tie-in to the old-school scene without really giving it an identity of its own. This comes off with way too much of a close-minded feel of the 80s which is so based on this style that there’s not a whole lot of room for this to go, and while it may have quite an effective touch here this does become an issue, though this one has a bit of a free pass being a debut.

Being quite a simplistic and rather one-note style of old-school attack does get this one into trouble at times, but there’s little denying the energy and enthusiasm that’s present in here which does quite a lot to overcome these flaws and makes for quite a worthwhile effort for those that aren’t hung up on these issues who are aficionados of this epic-tinged traditional metal.

Score: 84/100

Does it sound good? Order it from here:
https://eternalchampion.bandcamp.com/album/the-armor-of-ire

Votan - At One with the Serpent

Artist: Votan
Release Title: At One with the Serpent
Year: 2016
Label: Self-Released/Independent (Sepulchral Silence re-issue)
Genre: Epic Black Metal
Tracklisting:
1. Lords ov War
2. Scorn Through Malice
3. The Serpent of Na'Chan
4. Destruction of the Purest Form
5. Fallen Empire
6. Plague Storm
7. Death March in the Nile
8. Withered

Initially formed in 2011, Texan epic black metal horde Votan has struggled to keep its lineup consistent over the years, offering a rotating list of musicians before finally settling on their current quartet configuration. Going straight into the fray, the group now offers it’s debut full-length independently July 1, 2016 with a re-issue July 15, 2016 on Sepulchral Silence.

There’s a lot to like here as the album manages to work out a rather nice, raw sound here to go along with the frenzied epic work present for the most part, which is a nice part of the appeal overall here. With the rather tight riff-work elsewhere on display, it’s quite an impressive racket to leave the rattling, raw production for the main riffing and the drum-work on display here which is what really drives this one. Featuring the rather typical swirling tremolo patterns in conjunction with that raw style makes the music a lot grander and more majestic than would typically be the case. This riffing style ends up making it into a slightly more progressive area than expected here due to the album’s mostly overlong arrangements that further the epic mindscape where it’s built upon the varied tempo changes and dynamic patterns in the arrangements to make an epic-sounding track.  Offering plenty of backing keyboards that really further this large, grand style of work by going into the overloaded-into-the-background format here where it’s all based on the constant blaring in the background which is then furthered with the raging, blaring tempos to make this seem a lot bigger and grander than it really should be. While this is certainly a nice overall main attack that’s utilized here, the fact that the album is so raw does strike this one down somewhat with the rattling, weak-sounding drum-work not unleashing it’s full-power or the way in which the buzzing keyboard work dominates and overshadows the light guitar-work in the background of it all. It's also not really helped with the fact that there's several songs that are a bit too long that aren't really needed to be that way, tending to make this seem like an epic somewhat more on virtue of the length of it's compositions rather than the overall effect of it's music. This isn’t a truly detrimental or damaging flaw, but it is noticeable to a large degree here.

Though it’s got some minor flaws on display here that aren’t really all that detrimental to it’s overall enjoyment and which is mostly a case of debut jitters that should get ironed out as they continue on their career, in the end those are only enough to make this really appealing to fans of raw symphonic black metal or epic metal of this sort.

Score: 80/100

Does it sound good? Order it from here:
https://sepulchralsilencerecords.bandcamp.com/album/at-one-with-the-serpent