At The Throne of Judgment - The Arcanum Order Review

At The Throne of Judgment The Arcanum Order

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Tracklist:
1. Cacophonous
2. Sentinel
3. Mariner's Cutlass
4. Horus Rises
5. Discarnate By Design
6. Four Winds
7. Celestial Scourge
8. Ruin Of Gaia
9. Tomb Of The Thracians
10. Delphic Star
11. The Captive
12. Untitled Track

Release Date: 2007

user rating

3.7
great

Chart.

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On 11 Lists

3.0
good

Josh Deragon USER (11 Reviews)

2007-10-22 | 71 comments | 3,353 views

Summary: The Absence meets The Black Dahlia Murder. Sounds good right? Don't be so quick to judge.

3 of 9 thought this review was well written

Ah, the rise of American death metal. Besides the occasional diamond in the rough, the New Wave of American Heavy Metal was growing more and more bland faster than it surfaced in the first place. Through this epoch of mediocrity, death metal within the movement was struggling to breathe. Few bands brought out the big guns and really stepped up to make a difference. Between the Buried and Me have seemingly taken a stranglehold on the whole thing, with a few lingerers waiting in the wings for their next album release. With so much potential and room to rise on the market, where is everyone at?

Apparently, some of these daring metal heads reside in Lebanon, Ohio. At The Throne of Judgment: the name alone wreaks of death...metal. With a growl reaching for Glen Benton, and a nasty high scream, the album rips all the way through. Blissful harmonizing and the schizophrenic style of vocals, one thing comes to mind: The Black Dahlia Murder, and quickly at that. Luckily, ATTOJ doesn't suffer from the constant blast beats of their contemporaries. Just like TBDM and related artists, I get the feeling this band will get grouped with metalcore as a secondary genre solely because of their “death metal breakdowns”.

With the exception of the introductory and concluding tracks, the album just speeds along like your typical American melodeath record, while sounding all too familiar. One time through the album isn't nearly enough, unless you like feeling like getting to the sixth track without even knowing it. I think the band put in “Four Winds”, consisting of just blues-sounding clean guitar work, just to let you know you aren't on one of the first two tracks. A lack of lead work and almost no solos blends song by song too much. Although scarce, when played, it's as decent as to be expected from a new death group from Ohio, I guess. The guitars just seem to be synonymous with each other the whole time. I would say it gets boring, but they still do it well. The amount of good riffs barely make up for the amount of similar ones. The whole album in general swarms with shades of The Absence in more ways than one. There is one subject of concern as of late within the genre though that gives the band a push in the right direction.

Death metal has had an epidemic as of late: drumming. More specifically, blast beats, or the over abundance of them. Where would bands like Behemoth be without them? I don't know if Inferno can play otherwise. Nonetheless ATTOJ utilizes the discipline found in the latest wave of death metal, unlike the snare drenched music that is “deathcore”. I'm almost scared to lump this album in with the ranks of “deathcore” and the rest of the average metal scene, mainly because I want to like this band for some its better qualities. Despite sounding a good bit like some of the aforementioned groups, the band can define a sound of their own, but don't expect this album to put them over the top.

The best representation of what could make this band better in the future is “Celestial Scourge”. The recipe is quite simple: prototypical American death metal, and add a tinge of their closest predecessors, and you have the average ATTOJ song. Although this doesn't sound promising, the band has the stepping stones down to be better. The track is actually good, with elements of some of their European counterparts, including a bit of some old fashioned Gothenburg sound, just with a modern American twist. As crushing as the ending breakdown is, it almost cements them in the same tomb too many bands fall into. This trend is a dime a dozen, and still growing, even though so many of the genre have suffered the same fate.

I consider this band to be similar to August Burns Red. Not in sound, but in the fact that both bands have a good foundation. With solid work under their belt, the sky's the limit, but unfortunately, the sky in such an ever-growing-dull trend isn't too high. Drawing from their heaviness and power, coupled with a never ending supply of melody and harmonizing and, apparently, a riff machine, hopefully At The Throne of Judgment can escape an exclusively generic discography.

Although the song titles seem to just be made up to sound cool, they do the style justice, and give a little insight to a possible death metal future. Hopefully, by their next album, the band will have made a beeline line for the exit and reinvented themselves. The ship is in harbor, the anchor is up. All they need to do is set sail.

Rating: 6.26/10
- Josh D.

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