Hear and obey the gospel of the riffage!
While we grieve the loss of Lasse Pyykkö as the defacto vocalist of Hooded Menace, we can at the very least take solace in the fact that Temple of Void's newest album, Lords of Death, holds the death-doom torch high enough to burn the face of God.
Not having heard the previous album, Of Terror and the Supernatural, Lords of Death came as a complete surprise for me. The US band's riff oriented death-doom perfectly balances careful, gothic melancholia with limb-severing deadliness and super heavy density.
Not having heard the previous album, Of Terror and the Supernatural, Lords of Death came as a complete surprise for me. The US band's riff oriented death-doom perfectly balances careful, gothic melancholia with limb-severing deadliness and super heavy density.
"...a style reminiscent of a lethal combination of Pyykkö's hollow roar and Resurrection Through Carnage-era Michael Åkerfeldt,"
Presented with an absolutely monolithic production, Lords of Death should satisfy anyone who enjoys Asphyx, Autopsy, Hooded Menace and early Acid Witch. On the topic of the latter, Acid Witch-guitarist Mike Erdody (aka Mike Tuff) is screaming out his inner organs in a style reminiscent of a lethal combination of Pyykkö's hollow roar and Resurrection Through Carnage-era Michael Åkerfeldt on Lords of Death - Something which really ties the ghostly riffs together with the gruesome rhythm section.
If the world runs out of heaviness, it's because Temple of Void is using it all. Much too often heaviness is conditional of slow tempo, but the band in question keep things going - at the very least - at a bulldozer's pace, never shying away from putting the pedal to the metal.
It seems like every other album these past two years has been with Paolo Girardi doing the cover artwork. This is merely an observation though, and I'm not complaining, becuase Girardi is like a modern-day Hieronymus Bosch, and his style fits this album like a glove.
Only few things detract from the final scoring of this record; An Ominous Journey, a sort of half-way intermission track, sticks out like a sore thumb, not only because it's entirely acoustic guitar, but especially because the production sounds so different and loud compared to the rest of the album. Lords of Death has so many well-crafted riffs, however, and the dynamics of the band is so strong and vivid that one can scarcely refrain from banging ones head.
If the world runs out of heaviness, it's because Temple of Void is using it all. Much too often heaviness is conditional of slow tempo, but the band in question keep things going - at the very least - at a bulldozer's pace, never shying away from putting the pedal to the metal.
It seems like every other album these past two years has been with Paolo Girardi doing the cover artwork. This is merely an observation though, and I'm not complaining, becuase Girardi is like a modern-day Hieronymus Bosch, and his style fits this album like a glove.
Only few things detract from the final scoring of this record; An Ominous Journey, a sort of half-way intermission track, sticks out like a sore thumb, not only because it's entirely acoustic guitar, but especially because the production sounds so different and loud compared to the rest of the album. Lords of Death has so many well-crafted riffs, however, and the dynamics of the band is so strong and vivid that one can scarcely refrain from banging ones head.
8/10
Released in 2017 by Shadow Kingdom Records
Links
Temple of Void on FACEBOOK
Temple of Void on BANDCAMP
Shadow Kingdom Records OFFICIAL SITE
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Temple of Void on BANDCAMP
Shadow Kingdom Records OFFICIAL SITE
Follow TONEwood on Facebook!
LISTEN
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