Spell Garden - Spell Garden (2023)

Country: Brazil/Argentina
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Jan 2023
Sites: Instagram | Metal Archives

Well, this found me at just the right moment. Last week ended with albums that are clearly slick and capable and professional, attributes that bands strive towards, but they just left me dry. I'm talking especially about Ten and Xandria and I'm very happy to say that this second album by Spell Garden is the precise opposite and felt like a breath of fresh air. They're an international team up between one musician from Argentina and two from Brazil who play a form of doom metal that's not averse to dropping down into stoner rock and this is their second album.

Most crucially, even for a second album, it's not remotely slick. There are rough edges to be found all over this release, details that other bands would have polished smooth and gleaming, but they make this sound real. I felt this music and, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how technically brilliant you are, your job is to make people feel what you do. Spell Garden succeed magnificently at that. Ten and Xandria might impress stadiums with shows. I'd much prefer be at a club the size of my front room being deafened by Spell Garden with a stout in my hand.

Now, rough edges don't mean that Spell Garden are free of subtleties. While much of this appears to be a power trio plugging in and recording live in the studio, there are layers behind these three musicians. I don't just mean the swirling atmospheric keyboards on Mars Crimson Mountain which aren't surprising at all; I'm thinking of the violins on Lilith and the way that song drops into piano to finish up. The acoustic Spanish guitar during the intro, Daughter of the Storm, points the way to that sort of thing and it's over far too soon. It's important to note that the band don't overdo the textures. They're there when they're needed and then they get back to the crunch.

The biggest success here are the riffs, which come courtesy of Raphael Santos. These go way back to the early days of Black Sabbath in style but remind of latter days because they're so simple but effective. Back in the late eighties, I remember wondering how Tony Iommi could keep generating such effortlessly simple riffs over and over again. He'd already invented the genre and bands had been mining it for a couple of decades, but they'd all missed this simple riff and that one and the next one too. Somehow only Iommi and precious few others had access to more. Well, Santos can be added to that list. It's 2023, people. How has nobody conjured up riffs like those on Lilith, Spell Garden and Black Chapter before?

A less obvious success but a clear success nonetheless are the drums of Allan Caique. For much of the album, he's not doing anything flash, but I love the cymbal sound and he does delightful work with those cymbals on Dogma and Ritual of High Magic and especially during the breakdown late in Mars Crimson Mountain. I adore how the latter works its way to a logical conclusion, only for the cymbals to keep going until the band ramps back up and Santos launches into a brief guitar solo. It reminded me of some of what Michael Giles did on the first King Crimson album.

Less successful are the vocals, but I need to explain. Two musicians share vocal duties here and I'm not sure which is which, but there's a clean voice and a harsh voice. The clean voice shows up first, on Goddess Roots, the first track proper, and it's capable if hardly spectacular. It shows a lot more character on Spell Garden, because it's emphasised, rather like a heavily accented South American Iggy Pop recorded guerrilla style. The harsh voice is great when it's an accent, as on Spell Garden, but less effective when it's the lead, as on Black Chapter, because too much of it at any one time is a clear indicator of how limited it actually is.

And here's where rating systems prove frustrating. I gave Ten and Xandria 7/10s because both are highly capable releases that ought to please their respective fanbases. This is rougher around the edges with less clear mature songwriting and flaws that are easy to highlight, but I enjoyed it far more than either of those slicker albums. So, while I felt bad at giving those a high rating of 7/10, I feel bad at giving this a low rating of 7/10. So it goes. I guess this is where words come into play...

Xandria - The Wonders Still Awaiting (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Feb 2023
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This is the eighth studio album for German symphonic metal band Xandria, though it's also kind of a second debut, given that the line-up has been almost completely replaced since the prior album, Theater of Dimensions in 2017. Vocalist Dianne van Giersbergen left soon after that release, while bassist Steven Wussow followed suit in 2019. Then long term members Philip Restemeier and Gerit Lamm did likewise in 2022. Now, Marco Heubaum had been the sole founder member almost since he founded the band in 1997 but Lamm joined in 1998 and Restemeier in 2002. I believe both are on everything the band has ever released, making this a fresh start for Heubaum and his brand new set of colleagues.

If that might suggest a paradigm shift in their sound, I should highlight that it isn't that different to the Xandria I've heard before. Now, I'm notably out of date, because I believe I've only heard a couple of early albums by them, nothing more recent than their third, India, which is closing in on two decades old now. This feels similar, plenty of power in the sound but with the symphonic more prominent. From the very opening, it builds as much through choral or orchestral swells as it does through the guitars. If there's anything new, it's a more rhythmic lead guitar, a modern fancy.

So I'd call this symphonic metal over symphonic power metal and that tends to lean heavily on the talents of the female lead vocalist. Ambre Vourvahis is the sixth such in the band's history and she seems capable without carving out a niche. It's a crowded field for sopranos, so that it's an uphill struggle for anyone new to distinguish herself. Vourvahis, who is apparently half French and half Greek, does well with a warm and approachable default voice and as well when she soars upward. That said, even after seventy-four minutes of this album—Xandria don't seem to know how to self-edit—she still sounded good, rather than like Ambre Vourvahis. Maybe in time.

She gets plenty of opportunities on Two Worlds and Reborn, the openers, bolstered by the choral efforts and by a harsh voice, presumably provided by Heubaum, to provide occasional beauty and the beast moments. The biggest opportunity ought to have been on You Will Never Be Our God, a song also featuring Ralf Scheepers of Primal Fear, because they would be an interesting duet, but he's far too low in the mix for that to happen. The opportunity was squandered.

Frankly, the best thing about the album is that it's pretty much what I expected. There's energy in this music and the vocals and choral backing add more. While the tracks did blur a little together a first, second and third time through, none of them seem like they let the side down. Yes, this is too long, notably so, but that's not because it's packed with filler. I enjoyed each song as it was playing and didn't regret any of them. But what would all I call out for special mention? Not a heck of a lot is the quick answer to that. The drum intro to Ghosts? I should be able to find more than that, even if Dimitrio Gatsios shines throughout.

I should certainly be able to find more than that on the guitar side, but the guitarwork, from both Heubaum and Rob Klawoon, fails to impress. It's not bad, I should emphasise. Both are clearly able but they don't seem entirely willing and the mix doesn't help them. It emphasises the vocals over the guitars at every step. The riffs are also too modern and staccato, even if they don't attempt a full on djenty approach, and the solos are too infrequent and too lost. So that's the worst thing to my thinking, along with the lack of will to self-edit.

If you forced me to pick favourites, I'd probably suggest the opener, Two Worlds, which sets a scene well, and some of the songs midway, like Ghosts and the much softer Your Stories I'll Remember. If we're going to focus on the vocals, then let them be ones where Vourvahis is free and clear on the sort of material where her sustains can shine. And that's a tell for me, because I don't usually pick out the softer songs on symphonic metal albums for special mention. This one shines because of a strong lead vocal and orchestrations that aren't just swells; there are plenty of strings here and I liked how they weaved in and amongst the choral voices.

And so, like the Ten album I reviewed yesterday, this is another album that I feel fairly deserves its 7/10 but didn't engage with me the way I hoped it would. I hope we're not setting a trend here for 2023. I want to hear albums doing things I haven't heard before that I want to keep on listening to, even if I have more to move onto. Ten and Xandria may well be your bag, but they're not mine right now.

Atsuko Chiba - Water, It Feels Like It's Growing (2023)

Country: Canada
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 13 Jan 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Hailing from Montréal, Québec, are a neatly uncategorisable band who veer between psychedelic rock, post-rock and progressive rock, with occasional incorporation of other sounds. There's plenty of old school epic psychedelic Pink Floyd on the opening Sunbath, but it ends up reminding of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, with repetitive, almost ritual vocals, a comparison that carries into the next song, So Much For, which takes one of those side trips into another genre, namely funk. It must be said that King Gizzard are notorious genre-hoppers too, so it's no real shock to hear them so much here.

I like those openers, but Atsuko Chiba grabbed me on Shook (I'm Often) and underlined how damn good they are on Seeds. The former arrives in glorious fashion and I wish I could explain what they might be doing. I think the sound is generated by keyboards, but it could be in collaboration with a guitar. It arrives more reminiscent of Vangelis than the Floyd but it wavers as if it's alive, a swarm of sentient buzzing jellyfish floating through space, with the voice of Karim Lakhdar (I presume) a fascinated passer by, courtesy of an effect on his vocal that's a nod towards space rock.

There are precious few vocals on Shook (I'm Often) but they're repeated and help to lull us into the song's groove. Seeds has more in the way of lyrics, but it's also a longer song, heading towards the eight mark. That disembodied echo is still there as it begins, over a pulsing synth backdrop, and it all builds wonderfully. There isn't actually a heck of a lot happening during the long instrumental section in the second half, but I haven't been so rivetted by a piece of music in a long while. It's an enticing, hypnotic, psychedelic dream and it wraps up with some wild strings, just like the Kronos Quartet were recording next door and they stepped in to provide the finalé.

As if they couldn't figure out how to follow Seeds, but didn't want to end the album on that note, it would be fair to call Link almost conventional in response, its title probably representative of what it does here. It's much more of a song than the prior pair and it's angry, the persistent bass of David Palumbo leading us ever forward but the vocals of Lakhdar (again, I presume) raging at us in a post-punk fashion. This is heavy Talking Heads, a more antagonistic Cake. And it's done in two and a half minutes, because the rant is over.

It's the title track that wraps up the album, the longest song by a whole second. It's certainly not a return to Seeds, turning up the psychedelia and adding a trippy narrative section in the middle. It plays well and it's a decent closer for the album, but it feels like it's trying a bit hard, while Shook and Seeds seem to have grown more organically into their eventual shape. I found that, even while I was enjoying the title track, I was throwing my mind out and back to revisit those earlier pieces.

I should probably mention that Atsuko Chiba is the protagonist of a science fiction anime feature called Paprika, which I haven't seen but clearly should, because it's a Satashi Kon and I've enjoyed Perfect Blue for decades. She's a psychologist who enters people's dreams through use of a device called the DC Mini, as the alter ego of the title. And that rather sounds like the closing track. This is a chaotic song and it might help to imagine Paprika helping us to make sense of it.

This is my first Atsuko Chiba album and I fully intend to track down the prior two, Jinn in 2013 and Trace in 2019, to see where this sound came from. All I know at this point is what I heard here, plus the fact that they're a five band with two guitarists who play synths and a third doing the same in reverse. Their sonic backdrop is also aided by a string quartet and a brass section, though they're rarely obvious, weaving their contributions into the existing sound seamlessly.

Ten - Something Wicked This Way Comes (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Jan 2023
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Just a day after reviewing the new Crowne album, here's another band I've heard more than once on Chris Franklin's essential Raised on Rock radio show. Unlike Crowne, Ten have been around for a long while, forming in 1995 with a traditional hard rock sound that would have been seen as uncool in the extreme, not to mention backward looking, at the time but prophetic and ironically forward looking today, given the resurgence of this style at the expense of much of what the nineties were all about. This is their sixteenth studio album, the second they put together during lockdown from COVID after last year's Here Be Monsters.

The biggest difference between Crowne and Ten is that the former shift a melodic rock base into a firmly power metal style, while Ten take a hard rock sound and make it melodic. However, what I'd found after a first listen to this album and haven't yet lost after a couple more times through is its subtlety. Crowne are in your face from the outset and never quit with that approach. This is always a little subdued, letting the reliable riffs of Dann Rosingana and Steve Grocott chip away at us and the voice of Gary Hughes lull us into the Ten mindset. There's no bludgeoning here, just coaxing.

That's not a bad approach and it's easy to be swept along by it. It's decent stuff from the opener, a sample-led Look for the Rose, to the closer almost an hour later, The Greatest Show on Earth. The catch is that it's so consistent that it becomes samey. There were many points I'd start to jot notes down on a particular song and suddenly realise that the band had already shifted onto the next, a startingly similar feel and tone and vibe making me fail to acknowledge to gap between them.

As such, it's hard to call out favourite tracks, because they all blur together into a single hour long track. Sure, Look for the Rose stands out because of its opening sample, a short section delivered by the witches in Macbeth, much quoted and the source of many a title, including this album. In a similar way, Parabellum stands out because a set of opening samples, politicians and newsreaders talking about the beginnings of wars. The title track stands out because of its keyboard intro and a jauntier nature. But, excluding intros, which often prompt notes, mostly courtesy of keyboardist Darrel Treece-Birch, what else stands out?

Maybe the prominence of keyboards early in The Only Way Out and the focus on power chords and ticking cymbals as it builds put it apart from everything around it, but it loses that individuality as it runs on. Maybe The Greatest Show on Earth has a little of that, courtesy of an excellent solo at its heart and an unusual phrasing to its verses, but again it gradually becomes another song here. It's a little prog in the way that early Magnum was often a little prog, but it doesn't want to flaunt anything like that. It feels like it wants to get back to what it's done all along.

At the end of the day, the only song I'd call out is The Tidal Wave. This one dares to be a little more than its peers, and I'll happily acknowledge that "dares" is a loaded term. It's no grand departure, trawling in new vistas of music to shift its genre and thrill us with originality. It's notably similar to the rest of the album, but more and better in a memorable fashion, with a bigger chorus and real sweep to what it does. Should that count as daring? No, but it does here and that's telling.

Maybe I need to listen a few more times. I certainly didn't dislike this. In fact, it's easy music to like and I'm not just talking about melodic rock in general there, but Ten's take on the genre. It didn't get old on me and I never got bored, even three or four hours into listening to the album. However, I expected it to build with those repeat listens and grow and deepen and it never did for me, with a single exception in The Tidal Wave. So, maybe I'll stick with it. Maybe I'll give it up and move along. After all, I have an unending stream of other 2023 albums to dive into.

All that said, I don't feel comfortable giving this a 6/10. I think it's a safe 7/10 with the caveat that, if you find an emotional connection to this band and this album, add a point more.

Entropia - Unhealable Scars (2023)

Country: Saudi Arabia
Style: Melodic Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Jan 2023
Sites: Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

I believe Unhealable Scars is only an EP, but it runs forty seconds longer than Reign in Blood, even with only five songs on offer, so I'm thinking of it like a short album. It's from a Saudi Arabian band called Entropia, who only formed last year but who have already got this far, with another single from last year that inexplicably didn't make the cut. The second single, Born Unknown, did, so why did they leave off Son of Dracula? Answers on the back of a postcard, as always.

They play a melodic form of doom/death metal that's very accessible but also very varied. It kicks off with Hopeless almost a grunge song with a doom filter applied to it, right down to the vocals, but then a harsh voice takes over, deep and resonant, and things settle down into more traditional territory for a while. It stays a highly unusual song, though, with the styles shifting and some perky drums from Hassan popping in at points, almost like I'd expect from commercial era Genesis.

I got used to this fresh take on doom/death reasonably quickly and started to really dig the ideas on show. Chaos in Silence starts out almost new wave, with dominant keyboards, but it eventually settles down. It continues to alternate between clean and harsh voices, but the clean one sounds less grunge and more folk on this one, even if both are supplied by the same man. Certainly, I see Abdullah AlGhamdi listed on vocals and nobody else. The riffs are heavier and the beat is quicker, reminding of points of Bucovina. I dug the guitars of Khaled C here even more.

And I dug them still more on Born Unknown, because they're elegaic as the song opens, the doom sourced from grief. They're very simple but very effective. And then we're back at full speed, fast doom with that harsh voice layered over everything. Born Unknown and No Eternity work well as a pair dealing with that cycle of grief, the sad acceptance of the solo piano that closes out the latter working well as a bookend to the guitar intro to the former. The journey between those two points is a tumultuous one, especially with No Eternity surely the doomiest piece here.

And that leaves the title track, which adds some prog into the guitar, which is yet another flavour to the mix. So this is grounded in doom, but the frequent harsh voice and pace make doom/death an appropriate definition. However, it's often faster and sometimes perkier than we expect doom to be, and it moves into alternative, folk and prog at points, not to forget regular heavy metal. It never seems to be downtuned, so guitar sections can sometimes remind us of Iron Maiden just as much as Paradise Lost. It's a tasty mix and an unusual one, which always perks up my ears.

This is only the second album I've reviewed from Saudi Arabia, after Creative Waste, but the two would seem to be wildly different in almost every way. Entropia are new, but Creative Waste have been around for a couple of decades. Entropia are based in the capital, Riyadh, at the heart of the country, while Creative Waste are a long way on the gulf coast. Entropia play an unusual mix of an array of genres, while Creative Waste are relatively straight forward old school grindcore. Clearly they're not too examples of a single scene but I'm eager to discover what else is going on in Saudi Arabia, just as I'm eager to hear more from Entropia.

This works well as a teaser, but I want to hear a full album. Maybe this does work as an EP far more than it does an album. Whatever it is, I salute its creativity, especially from such a young band.

Crowne - Operation Phoenix (2023)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic Rock/Power Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 27 Jan 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives

Crowne are a new Swedish band, formed in 2020, who are already on their second album and it's a strong statement. They feel like they're enjoying this so much that they might just stay inside the studio and turn out albums three, four and five in the next couple of weeks. Given that they play a tasty blend of melodic rock on steroids that's just as much power metal, it's not surprising that I first heard them on Chris Franklin's excellent Raised on Rock radio show. They're almost designed for that show, carefully tailored and custom fitted, with soaring hooks and constant melodies.

Those melodies are at the heart of everything, the riffs supporting them and frankly joining them whenever they can. It's not hard to see where the sound came from. While Super Trooper isn't the Abba song, there's some Abba in these melodies. It always feels cheap to suggest Abba in reviews of melodic rock albums, especially when they're by bands from Sweden, but their influence on an apparently unrelated genre only seems to grow over time. The most overtly Abba song here may be the closer, Northern Lights, which feels like the midpoint between Abba and a Blind Guardian singalong. I could easily hear the audience singing this chorus for five minutes.

The more pertinent comparison though is to a different Swedish band, namely Europe, just with a little bit more power metal in the mix and far more subtlety in the keyboards. Juliette may be the most obvious Europe-influenced song here, and not only because it's named for a woman, but it's far from the only one to demonstrate how much lead guitarist Love Magnusson has listened to John Norum and how much vocalist Alexander Strandell has listened to Joey Tempest.

That shouldn't surprise at all, but I'll confess to a little surprise at moments that remind me firmly of Alex Falk of Fear of the Dark. That's mostly in the verses rather than the choruses, but it's there on the opening title track and Champions and In the Name of the Fallen after it and ongoing. Fear of the Dark, of course, are yet another Swedish band, albeit not as well known as the others that I've mentioned thus far—and yes, I know that Blind Guardian are German. What's in the water up there in Stockholm and Gothenburg?

If there's a problem here, it's in how consistent this album is. It feels like an album that should be huge, because it's about as accessible as it gets. If you're into soft or melodic rock, then it's never more than a breath away from a melody and every song has a hook. It ought to work well for you. If you're into heavier stuff and skip over the softer material as a matter of course, well, this ought to work well for you too, because it's always energetic and powerful, even in its quietest moments. It looks at that sliding scale from Europe's poppiest singles to HammerFall's heaviest deep cuts and says, sure, that works for Crowne. Frankly, we kind of forget how heavy any particular song is or is not, and just fall into the album.

And, yeah, I said that's a problem, because we also kind of forget how good this is. While this is in motion it does the business, on every one of the eleven tracks on offer, but, when it's over, we get on with our lives and only gradually, as we listen to other albums and wonder why they're not quite as good, do we think back and wonder just if we've underrated this one. It also means that it's not an easy job to pull out the highlights. I'm remembering moments: the keyboard intro to Ready to Run, the chorus to Northern Lights, the guitar solo in Juliette. This is one of those choice albums where the best song is always whichever one is playing right now.

Circle of Void - Musings of Unbecoming (2023)

Country: Egypt
Style: Progressive Rock/Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 13 Jan 2023
Sites:

I know almost nothing about Circle of Void. They're an Egyptian outfit, though I don't know where they're from within that country. There are at least two members, but possibly more. Tarek Brery handles guitars and keyboards, while Moanis Salem contributes bass. There are drums here and I don't believe they're electronic, but I have no idea who's playing them. They play in an imaginative form of instrumental rock that's clearly progressive and occasionally experimental and which has a tendency to hop over into metal at points, if never for too long.

What I wonder the most is what their collective influences are, because this seems to be all over the map musically. I've gone with prog rock/metal as a label, for the sake of having one, but it's a tantalisingly varied album that often feels like post-rock, sometimes shifts into jazz, especially in Salem's basswork and has more than one section that feels like a solo instrumental album from a blues rock guitarist who wants to figure out how to conjure up new sounds from an old six string. There's a lot here to digest and almost none of it sounds ethnically Egyptian.

My favourite tracks are the more unusual ones, often in which Brery's keyboards pretend to be an orchestra by choosing instruments in turn to mimic. They see what it's like to be flutes and violins on Under Star 1, just as his pensive electric guitar pretends to be acoustic. They come back to the violins on Destiny and continue to do that all the way to the closer, Unbecoming, but they also find moments that sound like a brass section joining forces to make an emphasis. That happens on An Illusive Haven too, but the strings join in to create a dense Ligeti-like atmosphere that works well as an interlude, especially given that the album's epic is next up. The brass punctuation mark is at the very end of Unbecoming too, to open the way for soft piano to wrap up the album.

That's Circles of Void, which builds magnificently and continues to add diverse points of influence to the list. There's a voicebox in play halfway through this one and the guitar gets liquid after it, a sign that we need to add Peter Frampton to Jeff Beck and Allan Holdsworth as guitarists that it's likely Brery enjoys. As much as I like the easy to follow bass here which is lively and welcoming, it's Brery I keep coming back to. For a while, I was enthused by his keyboards but eventually his guitar won me over too, with songs like The Weirdo Meets the Maiden feeling like extended solos.

There's a lot here to digest, enough that I actually stopped the album halfway through my initial listen to start it over again now. I had certain expectations from the opening track, A Prologue to the End, which is the heaviest piece here and one with a disappointing ending, a fade that comes out of the blue when I thought the piece had a lot more legs. Those expectations were flouted as the songs ran on until I had to start over to reevaluate what I'd heard. And then, getting past the point I restarted, the album continued to flout my expectations. The ramp up in tempo at the end of Destiny II before it fades out with a brief symphonic metal choral section caught me totally unprepared.

To highlight just how much this shifted for me, I wasn't that fond of the opener, especially with an uncertain ending like that, but Under Star 1 won me over and the longer I went, the more I fell in love with this music and every fresh revelation it brought me. Is it just me or am I hearing a Mike Oldfield style guitar on Until There's Nothing? How long did I get into Unbecoming believing that it would stay orchestral throughout? Maybe when the drums kick around the minute mark with a heavy bass. Let's add Ennio Morricone to the melting pot though from that intro.

Not everything works, because I'm not convinced by sections where Brery's guitar appears to be unplugged but he's playing it anyway. They seem more like a rehearsal of a piece of music than an actual finished product. But hey, I'm only on my third listen and this just gets better and better. It isn't often that I'm surprised so well and so consistently by an album. Now, where can I obtain the background I want on this band? Do they have a website? Are they on social media? Is it just these two musicians? Who's playing the drums? And what did they grow up on in Egypt to end up with an unusual sound like this? Inquiring minds want to know.

Atrocity - Okkult III (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Jan 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I do like when Metal Archives list a band's genre as "various". Atrocity started out as a grindcore band called Instigator but shifted to death metal with the name change. However, after a couple of albums, they brought in a wide variety of other sounds, Metal Archives listing "hardcore, goth rock, folk and industrial" as a start. Wikipedia adds that they even found their way into disco and acoustic material. Of course, the entire band also plays symphonic metal as Leaves' Eyes, with a female vocalist added when functioning in that mode.

They seem to have shifted back to death metal for their 2013 album Okkult and they've remained there for Okkult II in 2018 and now Okkult III in 2023. It's a tasty brand of death as it kicks off with a long intro to the opener Desecration of God, full of choral ritual, chattering creatures and searing guitar. And, of course, a solid riff to launch into the song proper. However, for a band with such an outstanding range, this is surprisingly traditional. It's good stuff that grew on me substantially on a second listen, but it's not particularly surprising stuff.

That's not to suggest that there are no notes to be made, but even when they venture into a fresh genre, it's still done within a death metal framework. Born to Kill, for instance, is such old school death that it's close to thrash metal, merely downtuned further and with a harsher vocal. Atrocity hail from Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart, not crazy far from Destruction in Weil am Rhein, which is also in Baden-Württemberg. I would never confuse the two bands, but there are clear similarities, especially during the instrumental midsection, with solid chugging and effective guitar swapping between speakers. Of course, Alexander Krull's vocals are very different to Schmier's.

There's a gothic flavour on Malicious Sukkubus, introduced through more choral work but also an overt use of keyboards. There are a pair of guest vocalists on this song too, both female and both known primarily for symphonic metal, but there's little of that, if anything, discernible here. One is Elina Siirala, who is the band's lead singer nowadays when they're Leaves' Eyes. The other is Zoë Marie Federoff is an Arizona local who currently fronts the international project Catalyst Crime and has also recently joined Cradle of Filth. Maybe there's some of the latter in the theatricality that opens the song, as if it's setting the scene in a horror movie trailer. Either way, it sounds like one sings in a harsh voice and the other provides more of a spoken word approach.

The closer, Teufelsmarsch, also has a different approach due to the guests, mostly Misstiq, who's an Australian keyboardist known for YouTube videos in which she creates keyboard takes on -core songs. She adds an almost industrial flavour to this one, which opens with what I presume is the military march of the title. It ends up feeling quintessentially German, even though that edge is added by an Australian. It's also telling that most of the different textures that show up here are due to keyboards, even though Atrocity are clearly the guitar band we might expect.

Oddly, given that I usually gravitate to the more unusual songs on an album, my favourites on this one are more traditional pieces. That I'm fond of Born to Kill doesn't surprise me, because of my thrash background, but I rather dig the meat of the second side too, which is the traditional place to throw the filler, something that's thankfully absent here. I'm not entirely sure why I feel drawn to Faces from Beyond, Lycanthropia and Cypka, but it might be that they just get down to business and do it well without being diverted into anything fancy.

After all, if you're not going to do something new, then do something old really well and Atrocity do that here. It's a solid, reliable death metal album, done with agreeable pace and with some of the songs stretching a little by adding keyboards to shift the atmosphere here and there.