Review Summary: You only need to listen to the first track to get pleased. The rest of the album is nothing more than a snooze fest.
Industrial melodic death metal, have you ever heard that kind of music before? Admit that it at least sounds like an interesting form of metal. I had never encountered this type of death metal before until I found a band that played this type of death metal. The band is called
The Project Hate, their lyrics is all about the anti-Christ stuff and they come from Sweden. I would describe them as an apocalyptic death metal band since their music is pretty symphonic, atmospheric, heavy and somewhat complex. But there is more, this band uses two singers, one growling male and one angelic singing female. This creates a superb vocal performance along the crushing and apocalyptic music. This is one of many bands that I have found by random searching, I downloaded a sample from their website and after that I was hooked. Unfortunately this is one of those bands that no-one talks about, and that’s strange because they are definitely a unique band in the extreme metal field.
At The Entrance Of Hell’s Unholy Fire was the first song I ever heard from the band and I loved it. I prayed that the album would have the same content as the song so after a while I got the album called
Armageddon March Eternal (Symphonies Of Slit Wrists). It was released in 2005 and it has eight tracks and a total time length just above an hour. The overall sound production is quite flawless in most aspects; you can hear all the instruments and the vocals do not interfere with each other. Unfortunately there is not a good overall variety of the tracks. Most tracks follow the same direction, the tracks are all heavy, they all have this doomsday atmospheric structure but in the end everything seems so repetitive and tedious.
This album focuses pretty much on the lyrics and the vocals and these vocals sounds really good, especially from the male vocalist. The female vocalist uses a clean singing voice but unfortunately she doesn’t sing like
Sharon Den Adel. She can sing but sometimes you wonder if she has a bad lung capacity because sometimes her vocals really fail. The male vocalist is great (thankfully); he uses a real abyss roar/growl. His vocals are some of the best I have heard in the death metal genre, you can even hear the words compared to other death vocalists. These guitars and the bass do not deliver any certain highlights unfortunately. Instead of blazing and technical leads and rhythms or crushing bass lines there are only simple power chords, some tremolo riffs and some hefty shredding with some melody mixed in. Keyboards and other types of programmed equipment create a good atmosphere and depth to the songs and it also creates a varied overall sound. The drumming is a bit more advanced than the guitars and the bass. There are many different drum patterns but most of them are not so common in the death metal scene. We have the usual double bass kicking and other heavy drum parts but since this is melodic death metal the drumming is quite mellow and catchy.
When I first downloaded the opening track from their website I just had to get the album. But when I got it I thought this was one boring album. The only great thing in this album is the male singer with his amazing death roars; the rest is just so boring. Well, the melodies in the tracks were pretty good but in the end everything became one big snooze fest. The biggest flaws in this album are the time length in the tracks; almost every track is over eight minutes except from the ending track which is five minutes. Another bad this is the simplistic music and the lack of overall innovation so to say. All the songs have the same types of riffs, drums and vocal work, plus the boring lyrics. The band focuses too much on the lyrics and vocals. If the band could’ve used other lyrical themes instead of having anti-Christ lyrics all the time then it could’ve been a better record but that’s no the case here. Death to God and Christ, join the evil forces to slay the Christians, why have Jesus made us live in these terrible conditions are some of the basic messages from this band.
I’m not saying that this is a terrible death metal band; I think this is a band that death metal fans should listen to, or at least heard something from them. The individual instruments are not that amazing but the final result is amazing. This is the only album from this band I have heard but I thought it became so incredibly boring. There were too much symphonic elements, the female vocalist was not a real highlight singer, the overall track variety was poor and the eternal flaming of God, Christ and Christians was just so flat. The only track I enjoy is
At The Entrance Of Hell’s Unholy Fire, it has the right elements of brutal riffing, drumming, vocals and symphonic elements. The rest of the songs were uninteresting because I thought they didn’t have the same amount of brutality and energy. The album became melancholy after one track. But, I highly recommend that you take a look at this band because they are unique compared to other melodic death metal bands. If you like atmospheric melodic death metal or black metal then you will probably enjoy this band, but don’t start with this album.
Positives
+ Amazing and varied vocal work, beast and angelic vocals blended together
+ Pretty good melodic death metal
Negatives
- The lack of innovation and techniques in the songs was poor
- Too much symphonic elements
- The individual instruments felt too simplistic
- The songs are too d*** long
Recommended Tracks
-- At The Entrance Of Hell’s Unholy Fire (
Highly Recommended)
-- Resurrected For Massive Torture
Sorry but this album will receive a poor 2/5.
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