So when you think of black metal what is the first country that comes to your mind? Its probably Norway. Norway is known for producing most of the best black metal bands ever known in the scene. America is probably the last place you would look for good black metal. There are a couple of good bands from the U.S. like Leviathan, Kult ov Azazel, Abigail Williams, and a few others. This band, Aurora Black, is a relatively unknown band in the USBM scene. Unlike most of the other USBM bands, Aurora Black don't play depressive or suicidal black metal. This band's style is more along the lines of melodic black/death metal. The year was 2003 when the band released their debut full length album Burial in the Sea.
Just like a lot of other melodic black metal bands, Aurora Black start their debut album off with a pretty pointless instrumental that lasts a little over 50 seconds. The first instrumental has some black/death vocals over some women screaming and some creepy bells chiming. This leads into the first actual song Kelpie. It starts off with a death metal like riff with some death growls. Then it blasts into the black metal tremolo picking over the growled/shrieked vocals. That leads into a sort of metalcore sounding breakdown. The song keeps pretty much the same formula throughout the whole thing. it only lasts about a minute and a half until the piano outro. Charon's Boat is the next track. Once again the death growls are the first thing that are blasted into your ears. Some techincal death metal riffs are played in the background. The drumming switches up from being kind of fast to slower, more simple beats. About a minute and a half in you get a really melodic black metal riff playing over the black metal styled vocals. The rest of the song is pretty much black metal styled tremolo picking with the black/death vocals and some blast beats.
The next track is The Kraken. This is the first song where the vocals aren't thrown at you right away. Its also a more melo-death dominated song. It starts off with a melo-death type riff. The vocals come in after about 15 seconds. The melo-death riffs are the main type of guitar playing in this song. There is some fast drumming, but its not quite blast beats. The vocals haven't changed from the first couple of songs. Evoking the Entity of Daedulus follows The Kraken. This track starts off with the drums and then a couple seconds later a melodic black metal riff comes in. Of course right after that the vocals come in. This song is just about the same as all the rest until about two minutes and 45 seconds in. At this point the horrid, and I mean really, really horrid, clean vocals come in. I don't know who does these clean vocals, but they need to be beaten into a bloody pulp. They're that bad. The song goes back the the normal formula after the terrible clean vocals stop. Song of the Sirens is the next track and its just another pointless instrumental that can easily be skipped. Although its kind of interesting. Its almost a folky, acoustic guitar passage.
After the instrumental, Song of the Sirens, comes Sea of Demons. This song starts off with a death growl and some technical death metal riffs. Something new to take away from all the other songs that were pretty much the same. This song is by far the most death metal like song on the album. The song sounds pretty much like tech death mixed with a little bit of black metal and some deathcore as there are a few breakdowns throughout this track. Once again, the next track, Within the Depths of the Mountains, starts off with tech death riffs and death growls with some black metal shrieks as well. The second half of the album seems to be more tech death/deathcore oriented with some of the melodic black metal style of the first half of the album. Once again a couple of breakdowns and some fast tech death riffs and fast drumming dominate this song. The last real track is The Ocean as Dark as the Heavens. This track goes back to the dominant style of melodic black metal. It starts off with a black metal scream and some melodic black metal riffs. Sadly the horrible clean vocals make a return on this song. About two minutes in the madness stops for a couple of seconds while the guitars play some soft notes. The song pretty much repeats itself for the last two minutes. The last track is The Coming of Cetus which is once again another skip worthy instrumental.
Overall, this band has a lot of potential. Debut albums aren't always the best and that certainly applies to this. Its enjoyable, but nothing that you're going to want to listen to everyday. A listen every couple of weeks might be more appropriate. I'm going to assume that the band will pick it up on their next album. This album could've been at least a 4, but the things that brought it down were the horrible clean vocals, there probably should've been only one pointless instrumental, and it got a little repetitive even though its only 29 minutes long. Other than those problems, this is a rather enjoyable album.
