Thulcandra : "Ascension Lost"

Nothing is wrong with worshipping Dissection. Watain gets a lot of unfounded flack for having sound sound in someways similar, though Erik throws in ample dashes of Bathory and Fields of the Nephilim for good measure. From the first song of Thulcandra's newest the sound less like a Dissection tribute band and have begun to develop their own sound. It is a few blasts faster than the bulk of "Storm of Light's Bane". There also might be more of a shred fest going on here.As impressed as I might be by the first song, can they keep this up? They did skip the Reinkaos days. Uttering out some good Celtic Frost accent grunts before taking a more straight up epic galloping black metal feel. The vocals sound nothing like Jon. They are a harsher dried out croak of a rasp.

The drummer is from Secrets of the Moon, so it is not surprising that he has a nice touch or two in his cymbals and can break it down into the triumphant gallop at any time. This album is sparkling in production and seems like a more full realized version of the band. Midway into "deliverance in sin and Death" they strike upon a pretty massive thrashing chug. The main Dissection element to me are the acoustic breaks. But that goes all the way back to bands like Testament. In some ways this recalls the last Istapp album that came out in 2010. The chorus are layered and hooky. They work best int their most tightly coiled and powerful chuggging. The wheel is not eing redefined here but the band is certainly heading in the right direction. The clean guitar tone is not without some weight of it's own. The speed metal attack of "Sorrow of One" slows for a prechorus gang vocal.the album almost has too clean of a guitar tone to be black metal. For the record we are just going over the normal album's length worth of songs and not the bonus tracks.The vocal are almost understandable. I will round this one up to an 8 it's a vast improved for the band on the road to stepping out of  the Dissections shadow.