Harlott – Proliferation


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Do you ever have those moods where absolutely, positively nothing else will do but some metal up your ass? Of course you do – you wouldn’t be here otherwise would you? Well next time the calling is upon you, treat your tympanics to a tickle from Proliferation (Metal Blade) by Harlott. It’s the finding of gems like this that make me glad to be a reviewer.

Hailing from the land of shite beer and Bogans where absolutely everything wants to fucking kill you [he means Australia – UK Ed], these boys are clearly patriotic crusaders.

Equal parts MegadethSlayerAnnihilator and Darkane, this album is a proper, bruising, neck-destroying slab of old school trad thrash. As such, it can be a little derivative and predictable at times, but it’s all played with so much heart, pace and vigour that you can’t help but love it. Let’s face it – we don’t listen to thrash for odysseys of self-discovery. If you like your thrash, go see them on their tour with Annihilator. The crowd at those shows is going to look like a supercharged wind farm.

And that’s all there is to it really – there’s little point in going though track by track, as I’d be saying the same things about each one: Fast, heavy, tight, meaty, shouty slices of old school thrash excellence.

That said, we all have our favourites, and mine are ‘Proliferation’, ‘Systematic Retribution’ (it kind of reminds me of Mary Beats Jane in places), ‘Restless’, ‘The Fading Light’ (Annihilatortastic), ‘Civil Unrest’ and ‘Legion’ (We Are Harlott!).

This album is designed to turn a crowd into a sweat – and lager – drenched maelstrom of moshing, windmilling, sky punching and burst vocal chords.

In other words, it’s a fackin’ beaut, mate.

Steve Hughes will be proud.

 

8.0/10

 

PHILIP PAGE

 


Abyss – Heretical Anatomy


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When a new band pops up containing members from a variety of diverse backgrounds, it’s always worth checking them out. Toronto five-piece Abyss boasts veterans from the Canadian death, thrash and powerviolence scenes and have pooled their collective knowledge and experience into Heretical Anatomy (20 Buck Spin), a ripping tribute to old-school extreme metal that contains plenty of sneering punk attitude and knows how to hold your attention as well as bludgeon your ears into submission.

Clocking in at a mere twenty minutes in length, Heretical Anatomy wields a nasty, serrated guitar tone that could cut through flesh with ease. Aided by a bulldozing rhythm section and a vocalist who sounds like he’d stab your eyes out after robbing your wallet, the smattering of tracks on offer here draw heavily from late 80’s death and grind with Repulsion being a clear influence, especially in the shorter tracks such as the deranged violence of ‘Flesh Cult’ and the pounding, mutant punk battering of ‘Nightmares in Skin.’ Elsewhere, the rotting corpse of Carcass looms large in the feral Symphonies of Sickness (Earache Records) worship of ‘The Atonement’ which is tailor made for a surging pit in the Maryland Death Fest parking lot.

It’s not just knuckle-headed, gore obsessed fare either; several raucous guitar solos flare up to prove just how much fun the members are having, while the doomy dirge of ‘Thrall of the Elder Gods’ is pure old school death metal with a penchant for mood and menace. Whatever your pleasure, there’s plenty on offer here for seasoned death and grind lifers and while Heretical Anatomy has only come out this month, it sounds like it’s been thawed out of the Canadian ice after being entombed since the late 80’s.

More of this soon, please.

 

7.5/10

Abyss on Bandcamp

 

JAMES CONWAY


Unleashed – Dawn of the Nine


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Swedish death metal veterans Unleashed are 25 years into their career. Dawn of the Nine (Nuclear Blast), the group’s 12th album, is a quality 45 minute slab of brutal yet enjoyable old school death metal. Generally seen as one of the earliest extreme metal bands to delve into the world of Norse mythology, Dawn of the Nine sees Unleashed continue with tales of longboats, Midgard and Thor, picking up the story where 2012’s Odalheim (also Nuclear Blast)left off. There may be no shortage of other bands doing this sort of thing nowadays, but Unleashed still stand out in terms of quality.

The band – led by vocalist/bassist Johnny Hedlund and joined by Tomas Olsson & Fredrik Folkare on guitars and Anders Schultz on drums – might be long in the tooth but have crafted an album that still sounds fresh without compromising on their sound. From the opening salvo of ‘A New Day Will Rise’, the relentless shred of ‘Defenders of Midgard’ to the screaming lead single ‘Where is Your God Now?’, Dawn of the Nine is chock full of demonic bellowing , blast beats, chainsaw riffs and endless solos. It’s more heavy thrash than grinding, and you know you’re in 90s old school death metal territory, but is catchy and accessible at the same time.

Hedlund’s hellish vocals manage to somehow be guttural yet completely understandable – meaning the dense story isn’t lost behind incomprehensible grunts. There’s plenty of melodic riffing and addictively intricate solos – fans of Amon Amarth will find a lot to appreciate in the likes of ‘Where Churches Once Burned’ or ‘They Came to Die.” It’s not all blast beats however as Unleashed can varies the tempo without compromising on the heaviness; ‘Bolt Thrower’ is slow yet relentlessly brutal march, while the title track crushes at a snail’s pace before enjoying some Black Sabbath-style galloping.

‘Dawn of the Nine’ is massively heavy, surprisingly melodic, and a perfect update of classic 90s death metal. Despite being a dozen albums and a quarter decade into their career, Unleashed have still managed to concoct a quality album that’s unrelenting yet engaging and enjoyable. Fetch the mead.

 

8.0/10

Unleashed on Facebook

 

DAN SWINHOE


Gehennah – Metal Police (EP)


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To celebrate their signing with Metal Blade, Swedish quartet Gehennah are re-releasing their 2014 EP, Metal Police, with a whole host of extra goodies. Originally a four track 7”, the 2015 version now boasts a dozen dirty, in your face blasts of thrash and roll.

Although they’ve been together since the early 90s, Metal Police was only the band’s – made up of Mr Violence (vocals), Rob Stringburner (guitars), Micke “Hellcop” Birgersson (drums) and Charlie Knuckleduster (bass) – second release of the new millennium. As well as a couple of extra songs from the original sessions, the new version comes with re-recordings of older Gehennah material.

The original four tracks all follow the same path; short, sharp rockers of AC/DC meets Motörhead-inspired thrash. It’s over in ten minutes, but it’s great sweaty and sweary fun. The title track and a storming cover of The Dwarves’ ‘Fuck ‘Em All’ are especially pleasing.  The bonus tracks continue in the same vein; in your face, no fucks given rock and roll. Gehennah wear their love of classic Motörhead on their sleeves but frontman Mr. Slaughter’s bark adds an even punkier edge than Lemmy could rustle up in his heyday. The likes of ‘Carve Off Your Face (And Shove It Up Your Ass)’, the relentless ‘Hellstorm’ and ‘Piss off, I’m Drinking’ are the perfect soundtrack to a night of drinking, fighting and debauchery.

As re-releases go, Metal Police is a corker. A short but enjoyable EP has been transformed into a dirty, punky full length beast. What Gehennah lack in originality they make up for with energy, attitude, and amusing song titles.

 

8.0/10

Gehennah on Facebook

 

DAN SWINHOE


Unite In Pain (Part II) – Anders Nystrom from Bloodbath


It has been a most eventful year in the Bloodbath camp, with a brand new album in Grand Morbid Funeral (Peaceville) and the shocking and welcome news of Nick Holmes taking the chalice left by Mikael Akerfeldt and returning to his Death Metal roots. In the first of a two part feature, Anders Nystrom chatted to Ghost Cult about the change in their ranks, and his thoughts on the new generation of listeners who may not know or understand the Bloodbath heritage…

 

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What is apparent is Grand Morbid Funeral is less technically orientated and a much more primal and, ahem, morbid offering than its predecessor The Fathomless Mastery (Peaceville). This does point towards the influence of Nick Holmes’ addition to the fold, bearing in mind his work with doom maestro’s Paradise Lost and of course their debut and death metal classic, Lost Paradise (Peaceville).

Just by having Nick singing on top of brutal, heavy death metal is going to make it sound naturally like the first Paradise Lost album. The elements are so similar in some ways that it’s going to be a big nostalgic ride to go back to that era.

“It’s hard to say who approached who but it originated from Katatonia and Paradise Lost being on tour together and we were sitting down just having a laugh, having a good time, sharing memories from the old days… and these kind of nights became more and more frequent, and out of that some kind of idea was formed which opened the door for Nick to go back into those years and being able to perform growls again.

“We said we have this side project and we were thinking of the new album and making it really old school and you would be a perfect fit for it.”

In hindsight judging from Grand Morbid Funeral, any notion that Holmes may not have been up to task seem ridiculous; but being away from harsh vocals for so long it surely was understandable for their to be doubts about his capabilities…

“I guess in the back of your mind there was a little bit of hesitation but we kind of killed that really early on. I actually said just like any other singer out there he should audition (laughs). We actually sent him instrumental versions of old songs which he demoed his vocals on and sent back. Based on this we knew what we had coming, this killed all the hesitation and we were all convinced that this was right on what we wanted.”

 

 

Of course there was some backlash to his arrival in place of Akerfeldt,

“I think some of the more conservative fans, they would have just preferred Mike to stay, but you can’t force someone to be a part of a band who has altogether lost his interest for death metal. When that interest decays you have to be true to yourself, otherwise you’re going to be a fraud, a hypocrite. It’s not fair to yourself, it’s not fair to the band and it’s not fair to the fans, if you’re doing something where your heart isn’t in it anymore.”

“One thing that I wasn’t expecting was that some people didn’t even know who Nick Holmes was, and if you don’t know who one of the leading, legendary bands who were there in the roots then you really need to do your homework of metal history.

“It just shows that there is a big gap in the generation and with people growing up these days, the way they treat things is just very lazy how they haven’t gone back and traced their steps and see where its all coming from. If I were in their shoes, im always very jealous because it’s a new world to discover, there’s so much good stuff that they are missing just waiting for them to find.

“You have this thing called Spotify, and of course as a customer it’s a perfect thing, you pay one subscription and you get everything streamed for free but at the end of the day, for me I can see the comfort but I see a lack of magic in that. Theres nothing spiritual about listening to a stream for me, I don’t find myself in position I want. If I buy and album ive paid hard earned money into, I can hold it and I know I own it.

“Nothing says you can’t have both. Life, if you’re on the move then sure, have your Spotify, you can’t take a turntable on a fucking flight.

So, yeah, use your Spotify and itunes but please, keep your collections!”

 

 

Bloodbath on Facebook 

 

Words by CHRIS TIPPELL


Blakkheim’s All Time Death Metal Classics


To celebrate the release of Bloodbath‘s excellent new album Grand Morbid Funeral (Peaceville) Anders Nystrom (aka Blakkheim) talked us through his ultimate all time Top 5 Death Metal albums (and couldn’t resist sneaking in a sixth…)

 

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Entombed – Left Hand Path (Earache) “It features the guitar tone pedal called Boss HM-2 and that’s enough said. That pedal represents the ultimate guitar tone in the world so if you want to discover where that came from then this is the album to go to.”

 

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Morbid Angel – Altars Of Madness (Earache) “Probably the classic Death Metal album of all time; where every band, directly or indirectly, draws their influence from. It’s pretty much what started the whole thing. I’m not saying it necessarily needs to be the best in their discography but it’s definitely the essential choice.”

 

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Autopsy – Mental Funeral (Peaceville) “It represents a very morbid side of death metal; it’s sludgy, rotten to the bone and very dark. It also shows it’s not just about production values, you can also create magic with Death Metal by going more primitive and having imperfection as your guide.”

 

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Dismember- Like An Ever Flowing Stream (Nuclear Blast) “This is pretty much up there with Left Hand Path. It’s a little bit more underrated, they always came under the shadow of Entombed, but the song writing on that album is amazing and the production is at its peak and represents Sunlight Studio in Stockholm at its very best. The whole album is very much worth buying just for the opening riff of the first track ‘Override Of The Overture’ that riff is one of my all-time favourites. If you could just bring one Death Metal riff into space for an alien to discover it would be that one.”

 

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Deicide – Deicide (Roadrunner) “At this stage, there was no band as outrageous and controversial, they were outspoken Satanists and this album really shows it. It wasn’t just talk, they were living it. It’s a demonic album, it’s a very violent death metal album and it’s also representative of the whole Florida scene.”

 

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Obituary – Slowly We Rot (Roadrunner) “This comes down as well to Obituary, again an album that is almost loose in a way, it also has a hilarious lack of lyrical tendency! A lot of the growls on this album are made up of just sounds, which was an insane idea to start with. It has a really big Celtic Frost influence, so is good for people to go back with.”

 

Bloodbath on Facebook

CHRIS TIPPELL

 


Unite In Pain (Part I) – Anders Nystrom of Bloodbath


It has been a most eventful year in the Bloodbath camp, with a brand new album in Grand Morbid Funeral (Peaceville) and the shocking and welcome news of Nick Holmes taking the chalice left by Mikael Akerfeldt and returning to his Death Metal roots. In the first of a two part feature, Anders Nystrom chatted to Ghost Cult about how the new album came together…

 

 

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“It’s basically an impossible task to get all the members of the band together, that’s probably why it is six years between the last release and this one. Just scheduling, booking studio time, and getting everyone together is one crazy mission. Even though one member may be available another won’t be, and when he is available the first one isn’t and it’s just a never ending cycle, an impossible journey.

Bloodbath has never been the kind of band that needs to be a collective unit with the same spark to write because we always divided the composition individually between us anyway. The way things work is we make a conscious effort to have group sitting down first and deciding what the vibe is going to be, making sure everyone is on the same page, and once we are we can pretty much fuck off you know?”

 

Despite the immense difficulty in finding moments of writing, the process itself was relatively quick once the foundations had been made.

“Real writing started January this year, and I think I heard demos from everyone within a few weeks. So, yeah, it took a month, but it’s something we had been planning since six years ago, like lyrical ideas, conceptual ideas that sort of thing, but the actual songs weren’t until January this year.”

 

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Grand Morbid Funeral shows a departure from their previous album…

“There were certain elements we wanted to pursue, like a certain approach on the album we hadn’t done fully on an earlier album which was basically to make it way more organic, way more raw, stop overdoing things, stop editing things to death and just go old school. That also involved taking things down a notch. I think the more sludgy, doomier and heavier approach of death metal goes better hand in hand with that kind of sound. Also the last album was a pretty technical affair and we wanted to do something different opposed to that as well.

“We are like a chameleon in a sense, we can change on each album and do something that we like that reflects different kinds of death metal, so no I was never really worried but I kind of expected a bacjlash to happen but it doesn’t bother me, I am so proud and so excited about the album that I can’t be bothered about it”.

 

How do you feel the fans have taken to a Bloodbath without Mikael?

“I think some of the more conservative fans, they would have just preferred Mike to stay, but you can’t force someone to be a part of a band who has altogether lost his interest for death metal. When that interest decays you have to be true to yourself, otherwise you’re going to be a fraud, a hypocrite. It’s not fair to yourself, it’s not fair to the band and it’s not fair to the fans, if you’re doing something where your heart isn’t in it anymore.”

 

Bloodbath on Facebook 

 

 

Words by CHRIS TIPPELL

 

 


Preaching To The Perverted – Ferry Damen of Antropomorphia


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With new album Rites ov Perversion (Metal Blade) making waves, and a controversial video steaming up the internet (links below), Antropomorphia’s driving force Ferry Damen (vocals/guitar) caught up with Ghost Cult to fill us in on their journey to date, vaginas, necrophilia and Death Metal …

 

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“I believe art should provoke a reaction; good or bad” opines Antropomorphia main man Ferry Damen, whose latest creation Rites ov Perversion is doing its damnedest to provoke a good reaction all across the Death Metal scene. Not content with creating an album of hook-laden crushing riffs that throws back to the old school (you know, that classic time when Death Metal bands actually wrote songs, before the scene began a self-restricting and creatively redundant game of one-upmanship as to who could blast the fastest, or play the most complicated riff, most jarring time signature or biggest beat-down), Damen also wants to use his band to explore and discuss his perversions. “Maybe I’m just a little more perverted than the next person.  But then again, there are ancient rites that have the sole purpose to possess a dead body and making the corpse hunger for the love and sexual satisfaction of the one who has cast the spell.

“You can call this sick or maybe even pathetic but it fascinates me and I would even call it romantic. Haha!”

Be he pervert or romantic, Damen admits to a fascination with not just sex and the dead, but predominantly with the feminine: “Most of these lyrics, old and new, are written from a female perspective. Because to me a woman is a beautiful being, which to some extent can be fragile and even innocent, the innocence represented in giving birth to a new fragile life. When darkness and perdition manifests itself through this being, a woman, it intrigues me. (As for) the necrophilia aspect of some lyrics…? I just like I like envisioning these acts.

“It’s not a vagina fetish” he asserts about the band whose debut album was adorned with a tattooed vagina and have recently released a new video to accompany the track ‘Nekrovaginal Secretions’. “Our artwork and videos also feature darkly feminine characters. The lyrics (to ‘Nekrovaginal Secretions’) are based around a macabre love story where the main figure keeps the corpse of her girlfriend around. You see her enter in a ritual where she tapes herself having ‘sex’ with the corpse on video. We will release a director’s cut in a few weeks, which focuses more on the story. “Our visuals are mostly shocking and controversial for people that don’t understand it.”

That said, Death Metal has always been an avenue for extremity in lyric and aesthetics, be it political, (anti) religious, macabre or through the common medium of dark storytelling, and long may that continue. “If you look at our lyrical tradition you’ll see it mostly consists of a sinister, occult, misanthropic and sexual necrophiliac nature.”

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Yet, for a long while, Antropomorphia didn’t exist in the public conscience, and Damen’s aesthetic and cadaverous interests were, to all intents and purposes, consigned to being private, with the band spending 14 years in absentia after the release of their debut Pure (D.M.) in 1998.  “We struggled with among other things, time, because other music projects gained more interest, record deals got signed, I myself got involved in management, this all taking up most of our time and turning the focus away from the band. A final blow came when one of our founding members had to leave the band. So, all in all, we were stuck. For us, the logical thing to do was to put the band on hiatus.”

 A hiatus that lasted fourteen years between debut and Evangelivm Nekromantia, which followed sharply on the heels of the Death Metallers inking a deal with Metal Blade. “I never stopped writing music for the band though” and resurrecting the band had always a possibility, with sporadic rehearsals and song writing continuing and some tracks surfacing on myspace, even if matters weren’t progressed. “I would record some of these songs together with Marco (drums) at his Aftermath studio, our recording temple, and then Marc (bass) would record his parts. Every time we’d record or made music together there was a ‘spark’. We’d sometimes rent a rehearsal studio just to play some Antropomorphia tunes. At one point that spark started a small fire, so when the hunger grew we decided it was time to really feed those flames.”

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But things seem different this time around. The band seems to be on the rise, both critically and commercially. “I think it’s because we’re matured. When we started out we didn’t have the focus. The hunger was there but we got distracted easily. This time around we didn’t lose sight of what and where we want to go and our first goal was to record the album we always wanted to make. So we recorded a two-track demo and send that out to labels,Metal Blade being one of them. A few months later we signed a deal with them and things kept rolling.

“We were very pleased with the outcome of Evangelivm Nekromantia, it exceeded our expectations, adding to the fire and hunger that drives this band.” continues the frontman, describing it as an album that “harboured the characteristics from our older work, but was more groove based and captured more atmosphere.” And this is an approach that has carried onto current album, Rites ov Perversion, an album which stands as the bands finest work to date; a celebration of old school Death metal but with a strong, modern sound. “Our aim was to follow the natural continuum of that sound and meanwhile refine and expand on it. We wanted Rites ov Perversion to have more layers, be violent but also catchy to a certain degree, while staying true and honour certain Death Metal traditions. Listening back I can say we achieved our goal. It is catchy, raw, uncompromising, diverse and perverted. It’s a sonic ride through depths full of hatred, violence and diabolic aggression”

It feels like we are just getting started. There is this hunger within the band. It feeds the flames to this uncontrollable fire, which we hope to spread all over the globe. Our main priority (now) is to play shows, which (we are) working on.

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Censored video for ‘Nekrovaginal Secretions’

Uncensored video for ‘Nekrovaginal Secretions’

Antropomorphia on Facebook

 

WORDS by STEVE TOVEY


Rippikoulu – Musta Seremonia


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Does the “underground” really exist anymore? Most Metal fans over thirty will remember some albums being difficult – in some cases nearly impossible – to track down, but these days the most obscure and veiled albums can be heard online without any real issues. Even the arcane releases of the past are being dragged out of the underground and hauled into the light – a case in point being this ’93 demo from a Finnish Black Metal band so fourth-tier that if you’ve heard of them before you were probably in the band.   Finnish Death Metal is often characterised by a crushing Doom-flavoured approach and a preference for suffocating atmospheres over catchy riffs. Rippikoulu (apparently the first DM band to sing in Finnish, which is interesting if not terribly useful for pub quizzes) certainly didn’t buck this trend, the six tracks of Musta Seremonia (Svart Records) consisting of crushing slow-motion riffing, drawn out song structures and an atmosphere of utter bleakness.

 

For a near-unknown demo one year off its twentieth birthday, Musta Seremonia holds together surprisingly well, with a thick sound and merciless song-structures that at times creates a genuinely stifling feel. This is ugly music, as far as one could get from the thrashy-riffing and audible growled choruses that often pass for “old school Death Metal”. Some of the songs are longer than they need to be, but that’s entirely consistent with the atmosphere of prolonged suffering they build up. The same could be said for the lack of variety and generally one-note nature of the composition.

 

No, the biggest issue is, of course, the question of what it has to offer for a new listener now. A lot of bands have played this style of crushing Doom/Death in the twenty years since Musta Seremonia was recorded, and some of them have developed and progressed it further. There’s nothing on here that will be new people who are already familiar with the style, and the overbearing bleakness may not make it the best introduction for the curious, but for what it is Musta Seremonia is pretty hard to find flaw with. Rippi Koulu, Motherfuckers! I’m sorry.   7.0/10.0 Rippikoulu on Facebook   RICHIE H-R


Black Magician – The Pursuviant EP


Black-Magician-The-Pursuivant-EP-ArtworkWith their latest EP, Black Magician call on the pursuivant of the doom cult, the followers of valve amps and 70s fuzz. Alongside a handful of other bands advocating the return to analogue and a distinctly retro sound, they have managed to create a good blend of modern guitar clarity and nostalgic old sounds, ensuring they don’t fall into the easy trap of being another band making reproductions of old music while chanting praise for anything that comes from the past. There really isn’t a better time for this band to be around, with a return in popularity for vinyl and cassette this Liverpudlian quintet are far from being out of their time, they seem to be carving their own way in it.

 

For the adherents to the cult of Black Magician, The Pursuivant (Svart Records) as everything expected from a release by the band. The album is totally lacking in any recognizable familiar song structure, and has a distinct absence of any real choruses. This isn’t to say the songs are not enjoyable though, particularly opening track ‘The Pursuivant’ which relies on short riffs and returning refrains. Everything is dripping in layers and layers of warm fuzz, while the blaring Hammond organ sound flutters to the surface, before being replaced again by the rich guitar tones, which is all pulled together by barked lines from vocalist Liam Yates.

 

Despite only being three tracks long, the EP seems to cover a wide range of styles for the band, with the acoustic softer touches of ‘Grene Knyght’ to the dark, frantic almost hysterical instrumental track ‘Black Henbane.’ This change is style may be refreshing for the listener, but the release does seem to have been a little premature, and taking time out to work on a full-length album may have made these tracks make more sense together as a release. I’m not a convert just yet, but the guys certainly know how to pull together an interesting sermon.

 

7.0/10

Black Magician on Facebook

 

Caitlin Smith