Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Album Review: "Of Despair" by Horrified

Of Despair
Do you remember the point when you truly found yourself?

Up until that point you seemed like a different person. We all have a moment in time, or some cases many moments, when we walk away from what we were and into what we will become.

Those steps can be big or small.

For this author, I was truly found after getting serious with my wife. I know, it sounds cliched doesn't it? Some people were wondering if I had given up and had changed myself.

That was surely not the case though. That was when I stopped trying to be cool and accepted that I'm gloriously uncool. That was when I could accept me for me. It wasn't like Nik Cameron became a whole other person. Much of who I was remained in what I became, but it wasn't all the same.

Always be true to yourself, especially when who you were isn't who you are.

Horrified
Horrified, our good friends from the UK had a bit of a finding themselves moment as well.

In the before time, as in the time before right now, they were your classic English Death Metal Band.

Perhaps not quite classic.

Now, they are leaving all of that behind them and becoming a full on Black Metal Band.

Perhaps not all of it and perhaps not full on, but the differences from what they were and what they are today are palpable.

The vocal style is less Carcass and more Dimmu Borgir without being either of the two. Of course the keyboards are present, though not ever present.

The guitars have this tone that it's hard to imagine even taming them. The studio must have been awash in feedback. Big kudos to the engineering team on this one. Between the epic solos and the highly overdriven and amped up gain on the rhythms, this man probably deserves a medal.

There's a nascent scene of bands bridging the gap between death metal and black metal. It's funny to me because many black metal artists  have said black metal was the response to death metal.

Horrified hasn't become a whole other band but has let out some of the influences that hover around Aurora Borealis which gives way to new and different music.

Release: 3/25/16
Genre: Extreme Metal
Label: Stormspell Records
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