Realm of the Damned

I don't know if you realize what potential lies within the Australian death / black / necro fuckin thrash scene, if you don't then please check such bands as Destroyer 666, Gospel of the Horns, Abominator, Vomitor, Razor of Occam... The scene "down below" has developed truly killer, individual sound, one which takes a lot of influence from the old, pioneering bands - Venom, Sodom, Kreator, Bathory, Blasphemy, Possessed, etc., even Motorhead - and creates the obscure metal of the best quality. If you like "Satan" in your music and the sound raw and uncompromising, then they're for you.

Gospel of the Horns, as I already wrote, belongs in my opinion to the best Aussie bands. I don't really like their first recordings, like "The Satanist's Dream", much, but from the "Eve of the Conqueror" MLP through the "A Call to Arms" LP from 2002, they did fuckin shred. And here's the second album from the Aussie commando, "Realm of the Damned", released in 2007, as limited to 725 copies red gatefold vinyl, with cool poster and with great layout. Try to get this vinyl, as such music sounds best on this format!

Music wise Gospel of the Horns delivers a thundering old school blasphemous metal. I prefer to call it simply "metal", for two reasons. First, this is pure metal, not infected by any strange influences, it's based on classic instrumentation, played with the passion and understanding of the metal principles. And two, the band takes the equal measures of death, black, thrash and even more extreme heavy metal and melts it into their own music. They play it with savage energy, straightforward attitude and take no prisoners. They do play relatively fast, but don't think they use blast beats or whatever. It is fast in rather hmm... old thrash metal way. Gospel of the Horns doesn't waste their time and just shreds through the entire album, whipping and slashing with more and more razor sharp killer old school riffs. Meanwhile Mark Howitzer screams like possessed and Chris Masochist and Hexx play some noisy, Slayer-esque solos. Some of these leads really sound like good old heavy metal, like the one in the title track, especially if the riff and the overall tempo of the song the vibe of dirty rock'n'roll of Venom. There's cool dark atmosphere on the album and with the cool production, the final effect is truly "pleasant" he, he.

Yeah, Gospel of the Horns does deliver a good listening experience. Personally I do enjoy the album a lot, but have just two minor complains. First, the songs tend to repeat themselves a little, sometimes the riffs and the ideas sound quite similar and one may almost dare and ask the band whether they still have something new to offer in the future or did they already used all the best ideas? I don't want to say that "Realm of the Damned" is boring at some fragments, but definitely not every riff or song is that killer. There're some fillers, I'm afraid also. But I grab a beer, bang my head and don't even notice this really. And also, my other complain would be that I think I prefer the previous album, "A Call to Arms", slightly more. But that's just my opinion. All in all, Gospel of the Horns is good band and this is yet another solid effort from them. I highly recommend it to all old school orthodox maniacs.

This is the second full-length album from Gospel of the Horns, an Australian band playing blackened thrash metal.

The guitar sound on this album is great. The rhythm guitar has plenty of low-end and just enough distortion, while the solos are sharp and ripping. You can hear the bass quite easily on most of these tracks, and the drums are equally well-mixed. That leaves the vocals, and that's where things start to go wrong. They're much too low in the mix, so that it sounds like he's going "blah blah blaaaaaahrrr" about 80% of the time. It's a shame, because this band has excellent lyrics, and they deserved to be heard. Even their demos had better vocal sound than this!

In terms of songwriting, the songs on this album tend to be more straightforward and less epic than their previous work. There are a few pretty baroque songs here, though -- "Death Sentence" goes from mid-paced grandeur to a full-thrash interlude and a killer bass solo, then back again. "Blood and Iron" is another song in the classic GOTH tradition, with an atmosphere of fierce defiance that harks back to classics like "Eve of the Conqueror". In between are speedier songs ("Trialed By Power", "Strength Through Fear") and old-school stompers ("1915", "Retribution"), just about what you'd expect from this band. Quite a few of these should be killer live!

I've been looking forward to this one since "A Call to Arms", and I have to say I'm disappointed. The songs are great, and the sound is too, for the most part... but the vocals kill it for me. They're much too difficult to make out, to the point where I'd rather listen to anything else they've done. The music is excellent by any standard, so I can't do other than recommend this, but to me it's still a letdown. Get their other stuff (the recent Sinners/Monuments to Impurity disc is a great place to start) before you try this.

Review by vorfeed: http://www.vorfeed.net