Crash Music, 2004
- Vortex of Fire - Ashes of Winter
- Blood of thy Enemy
- Order of the Lunar Temple
- On Demon Wings
- Through Fog of War
- Stormbringer - Conjuration of the Nighthorde
- Unholy Perversions
- Star of Sirius
- Dying Light From Above
I was fully expecting to write a short, funny-guy review for this one, ridiculing the seemingly millions of generic brutal death metal releases being spewed forth by just about as many labels these days. My expectations weren't exactly top notch, what with the generic cover of a panzerkampfwagen rolling over broken, smouldering remains of civilization, with human skulls and people nailed to crosses superimposed on top via means of Photoshop and all...
...Well, fuck that, because this is a quality release. THROCULT, a band that I had never heard of prior to receiving this disc in the mail, describe themselves as "diverse blackened death metal," and a more apt description would be hard to come up with. The diversity stems from usage of plenty of differently styled riffs in each song -- there's a lot of half-harmonious, half-discordant black metal type tremolo riffing (actually sometimes reminiscient of really boring Norsecore like DARK FUNERAL, except done right,) and a whole bunch of rather inspired death metal riffs, often highly melodic -- in the sense of THE CHASM, rather than IN FLAMES. Actually, several of the arpeggio-based riffs remind me more than a little of THE CHASM's methods. The drummer is not blasting ALL the time (often, though,) and the varying, occasionally epic song structures and occasional inclusions of moody acoustic guitars add to the diversity aspect.
Maybe it's because of my disenchantment with the current state of death metal, but Stormbringer - Conjuration of the Nighthorde generally comes across as fresh and interesting. Perhaps it gets a little tiresome towards the end like many albums of its ilk, but generally the material is qualitative throughout. Feeling somewhat like a more black metal-tinged THE CHASM, except not as good, THROCULT has made a very listenable release and given me a pleasant surprise. There is room for improvement here (focus even more on the diversity next time!) but on the whole: thumbs up.
Rating: 7.6/10
