Era of the Apostate

Before listening to this album, I had only seen the band twice, and heard the tracks on their myspace. AotS was formed by Mike Priest, former Impiety guitarist, and this slab of quality metal is recommended to any metalhead around the world.

Album opens with a haunting chant, with a spoken part over the chants. Good intro, but rather short, I felt. It then kicks off into an extremely thrashy riff, with a melodic lead and Priest's roaring vocals. He reminds me of Chuck Billy of Testament doing death metal growls. Both of these guys do low growls, but their normal voice also shows, giving it a unique touch. Solo is fast and chaotic, another chorus finishes the song on a strong point. Before the listener can sit back and recall the unrelenting audio assault just endured, the next song bleeds in, perfect balance of melodeath and thrash. This is pretty much the formulae for the first 5 tracks, but with enough variety to keep it pretty interesting, especially in the guitar lines which follow the verses. The Divine Failure and the title track are especially catchy.

Elements Of Reprisal features a cheesy spoken part in the beginning, which is way too long, despite the cool underwater-sounding effects. Spoken parts should normally be kept as short as possible, especially when not doing a Bal-Sagoth-esque narrative but rather, about the "death of dreams".

A Past Revived consists of a keyboard and acoustic guitar instrumental, which manages to stay interesting throughout. The band finishes off the album furiously with Empires Of The Fallen and Unholy War(Atheist), 2 more cuts of melodically brutal thrashers.

Production-wise, guitar tone has a good lot of crunch. After all, tone is everything in a melodeath album. Rest of it is good, clear music without overly glossy production. Kickdrums have that annoying trigger sound, but it's not as bad as plenty of other examples. Solos aren't that amazing, short shreddy snippets that suit the music. Rhythm playing is great, a lot of attack in the sound, if that's the proper word. A rather short album, about 30 minutes in length, but good enough to warrant many repeated listens due to catchy melodies and smooth flowing album sequence. Recommended for fans of melodic death in general.