Dawn of Azazel "The Law of the Strong" CD
[Agonia]
Ripping death/grind from New Zealand with tracks that astoundingly run anywhere from two to more than eight minutes!? Right off the bat I'll go ahead and say that my only real problem here is that the recording lacks clarity and the vocals are mixed way too loud, with is a huge distraction from the tight and fairly intricate music. There are tons of changes and lots of tasteful speeds, but the vocals are layered all over the place between variations on growls and sneering screams, which creates a really chaotic foreground and clouds a lot of nice guitar and drum work. The bass is audible but its distortion tends to get lost behind the vocals and guitars, which are also pretty thick and slightly dirty. You can hear enough bass to make a difference, but a clearer sound across the board would really help here. Simply dropping the vocals back would be nice since none of the tones are particularly bad, but minor touchups across the board would of course be optimal. A lot of tempos are represented as well, from straight blasts to churning slow rhythms, lots of midrange variations, etc. I don't really think the lengths of the songs makes much sense since they'd likely be more powerful in shorter, harnessed blasts. For example, the added dissonance in "Victory (Iniquity Guides My Blade)" is excellent until the slightly noisier break towards the middle with lots of painfully obnoxious vocal shrieks, at which point the track totally loses its steam and falls apart. "I Stand Unconqurered", on the other hand, is far more frantic and chaotic as a whole, coming off more like something I'd expect from a metalcore record - significantly less interesting than most of the other songs. Then, further solidifying my opinion, "Conflagration of the Mortal Soul" is far shorter (2:15) and more punishing, with perfectly executed speeds and linear riffing that maintains more feeling. The opening chords of the eight-minute "Justice is a Fist" are fucking sick in their insane disharmonic majesty, and the dominant slow riffing in the track is excellent, but still, the use of speed and grating guitar textures in a track so lengthy ends up dragging things on past their welcome. I like most of the layout, which fuses bone and metal imagery with references to skeletal figures, handguns, bullets, etc. There are also some manipulated band photos and strange icons fused into some of the center pages alongside the lyrics, which deal exclusively with violent destruction at the hands of relentless victory. "Lurid words, thoughts, and deeds becoming excrement, The refuse from your mouth surmounts to nought and nothing, The discipline, will, and power behind my every action shall piss upon your belligerent fantasy..." I actually think most of these lyrics are better written than average, as well. I will say that musically this is far different than the lyrics and imagery would suggest, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing, but it's nice to be surprised like that, so... make of it what you will. More good than bad, but these guys could definitely get a bit more volatile than this, so I'll be curious to see where they end up. (6/10)
Running time - 37:03, Tracks: 8
[Notable tracks: Conquer Throned, Triumph Upon Equinox, Conflagration of the Mortal Soul]
Dawn of Azazel - http://www.dawnofazazel.orcon.net.nz

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