Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Planetary Duality - The Faceless


The Faceless cemented themselves into the global metal scene with their debut album Akeldama in 2006, which was a mix of melodic death metal and deathcore with copious of amounts of technicality to top it off. In 2008 they released Planetary Duality, which saw the Faceless move away from the deathcore influences and embrace a purely melodic style of technical death metal. It recieved 'nearly' universal critical acclaim.

Personally I feel Planetary Duality is vastly superior to Akeldama, mainly due to the album as a whole being less chaotic than Akeldama, with a more smooth quality about it, with their grinding riffs, searing melodies and crushing breakdowns flowing seamlessly. Abandoning the synths prevalent on Akeldama was also a very good decision if you ask me. Planetary Duality presents itself with a very robotic and alien atmosphere, with lyrical themes mostly concerning.. Well, alien forces and whatnot. Clocking at about half an hour, and is an engaging and powerful album which manages to balance a wide variety of influences almost perfectly.

Download it on Mediafire

Monday, January 24, 2011

Ascension - With Burning Tongues Demo (2009)

As putredines said so brilliantly "Let the process of revival begin!"


I have been pretty lazy recently and I haven't had the will to post since last year. It occurred to me that I just had to get up off my ass and listen to some fresh music. I was stuck in a daily routine that made me dull and I had lost the will to listen to unfamiliar music. I just restored that will today and therefore I bring you Ascension...


Ascension is a German Black Metal band, their take on Black Metal is atmospheric, scary and a bit theatrical. This is probably the longest demo I have heard, it's 45 minutes long, though it contains only 5 songs. This is because the songs are long and somewhat repetitive but in a good way (I don't always like repetitive stuff). I feel like the reaction I get from this demo is the way they intended it to be. It even startled me a few times in the calm, atmospheric parts. That and the overall feeling of the album shows that they poured a lot of emotion into this.


There is one thing I don't like about this album, it's the drums. They are not very spot on and some of the fills and such are forced in a way that makes it groove less. However this does not ruin anything because the album is intended to be heard as an overall feel rather than being focused on each and every hit or groove. 


They have a full length coming out this year, I haven't checked out when it will be released. It's called 'Consolamentum', be sure to check that out too.


Check it out on MediaFire

Friday, January 21, 2011

Wormed - Quasineutrality

If some one would ask me what was the best release in 2010? I would most definitely say Quasineutrality or the Chapters of Repugnance by Defeated Sanity.


This is a 2 track single which hopefully will lead to another LP by Wormed.

A fantastic single, give it a try!

Download

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters

Let the process of revival begin!

Wolves in the Throne Room is a Black Metal band living in the forests of Olympia (not where the greek gods sleep, but in Washington). They have released 3 albums and some minor releases.

These guys are playing superb Atmospheric Black Metal that is surely able to put you in a forest immediately when you close your eyes or just make your brain download a cheesy collection of Darkthrone videos. Their lyrical concepts are about nature and shaman rituals, one of the many things that caught my eye when I decided to check them out back in '07 (their band name was the first thing I noticed, how can you skip such an awesome name?).

These guys are one of my favorite bands and I picked this album because it was the first I heard with them. I recommend that you should check their other albums if you are fond of this one.

Download

P.S. If you like this album and have listened to their other LPs you should check out Krallice, Altars of Plague (seriously you gotta' love the Khanate part!), Weakling, Drudkh (some consider them nazi, looking past that they create mind blowing black metal) and Burzum's Filosofem.