Eternal "Satanic Templars of the Dark Age" CD
[Sinister Sounds]
Four tracks of vicious death metal from France that's competent, but does suffer from an inefficient recording.  If the songs were really good I could probably live with it, I've heard worse, but the guitars have a distant sheen and the entire mix sounds sort of flat and tinny.  There's not much of a bass presence, the drums sound clicky, and the vocals are fighting against the guitars for space.  If nothing else they really need to get the guitars sounding beefier and more dominant in the mix, I think that's they key here.  I do like the material, though.  It's nothing particularly new, but they do mix up the tempos and throw around some interesting dissonant chords and twisted lead melodies to keep things from stagnating.  So rather than focusing on speed, speed, and more speed, they balance the blasting ferocity with churning midpaced runs as well as a few slower passages that highlight their discordant chord phrasings.  The songs are fairly well written too, with structures that repeat riffs enough times to remain familiar without sitting in one place or all sounding the same.  And the performances are tightly executed as well from what I can tell.  At times the drummer really does some nice cymbal work amidst the blastbeats, and I do enjoy some of the lead work, which varies from slower melodic passages to borderline blurry Slayer styled bursts.  "End of the Usurper's Reign" relies too heavily on tremolo picking for me to really appreciate it, but "Hardened in the Tears of Their Will" has a solid slow paced intro (sans that annoying pinch harmonic that keeps rearing its head) and bounces back and forth enough to pick things back up.  "Fanatic Desire" and "The War Dog's Mortal Ballet" are similarly split between tempo changes, but they come across as stronger songs due to a few riffs that have more creative note choices and picking patterns (though admittedly the drummer has more breathing room to do his thing in "Hardened in the Tears of Their Will") - and the breakdown in the latter is fucking great!  In some ways you could cite both vocal and musical comparisons to a mix of Krisiun and Deicide here, but there's definitely a bit more variation going on as a whole.  The layout's not that great.  The cover looks fine and has somewhat of an old school death metal look, but everything else is jumbled and cluttered with overzealous Photoshop layering and cramped text, including placing all of the lyrics under the CD tray.  The lyrics are also a bit cheesy, making little sense in their over the top cries for death and destruction: "Corpses around rotting endlessly, Eternal lamentations whispering their pain..."  Ignoring the immature satanic imagery and lyrics I actually think this band would be pretty fuckin' promising with a stronger recording.  I've not been overly impressed by most death metal in recent years as I'm still very fond of the classic early-90's style, but these guys strike a good balance between the old and the new (more the old, which is probably why it works for me), so with a more effective set of production values I'd be curious to hear more from ‘em. (6/10)
Running time - 19:54, Tracks: 4
[Notable tracks: Fanatic Desire, The War Dog's Mortal Ballet]
Sinister Sounds - http://www.sinistersounds.ca

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