Cast the First Stone

Hour of Penance are a technical/brutal death metal quartet out of Italy. Cast the First Stone is their seventh full-length album and their first with drummer Davide Billia. These guys are solid veterans of the genre who know exactly what they want. They want to brutally kick your ass as many times as possible and they do not mess around. There is a certain safety with bands like Hour of Penance because you know what to expect on a given album and if you are a fan of their music, they are unlikely to disappoint you. However, there is also a great deal of fun in something so singular-minded. Sit back, bang your head and mosh like your life depends on it.

This style of technical death metal tends to have two distinct speeds. First and foremost, you have the hyper speed mode where everything is played as fast as humanly possible with little regard for any kind of melody. It consists of relatively thin riffs played as fast as the guitarist can pick them and unrelenting blast beats with fast and furious triggered double kick drumming. The vocals in this style are usually low-pitched death grunts with lyrics being fired at the listener at a breakneck pace. Simply put, everything is done at hyper speed, hence the name. Cast the First Stone uses this style often but mostly for short bursts of death metal fury. The only time Hour of Penance employs this style for a whole song is on the blistering opener “XXI Century Imperial Crusade” where it works rather well for them.

For most of the album, Hour of Penance employs the second and far more interesting speed, hyper groove. Hyper groove is what happens when the band decides to slow it down a little. When this happens, the riffs get slower and much heavier, including employing breakdowns for maximum effect. The drumming slows down a bit too but it also gets more interesting, allowing Davide to show off his creativity. He does this fairly well in songs like “Chains of Misdeed” where he plays a rapid fire double kick pattern with a couple nice fills. The bass even shines on "Burning Bright" which is a rare occurrence for the band and it sounds awesome.

Despite the fact that a lot of this album is played at hyper speed and no song exceeds four and a half minutes in length, there are plenty of crushing death metal riffs to be found on here. Every song starts with one of those crushing riffs, setting the tone of the album and letting the listener know what is in store. This is particularly noticeable on “Wall of Cohorts”, which features killer guitar work alongside the crushing riffs and several sweet breakdowns. This track also sees Hour of Penance bringing something new to the table, symphonics. They are only used on this track and “Iron Fist” but they add another layer to the incredibly brutal atmosphere of this album created by the riffage and Davide’s hyper speed drumming.

Paolo Pieri’s vocals on this album are excellent. He shows nice range of lyrical speed by being able to match the speed of the instrumentation, always sounding incredibly brutal while maintaining some sense of lyrical intelligibility. His range also extends to pitch which is refreshing as many death metal vocalists only have one pitch. While it is clear the band has lost a bit of sting in their sound compared to their unholy trinity of classic albums, they are still a force to be reckoned with in the tech death world and will undoubtedly continue to be for years to come. Now if they could just retain a drummer for more than one album, they would be golden…

- originally written for The Metal Observer