Profantica : " The Curling Flame of Blasphemy "

Blackened Death metal is a cross of genre that gets through around for a variety of reason, more of than not it's a little dissonance here , some blast beats there few bands really get the balance right. This is pretty charred by the filthy flames of hell. The brand of death metal they tried darkening down was pretty filthy to begin with. Song writing isn't the forte hear, but I am cutting them some slack because of the mood they are managing to create. The bass sound almost overpowers the guitar. The drums are very big and this album is produced in a way that creates a cavernous sound without having to drown every thing in re-verb. The gurgles and gasped snarls that compromise the vocals generally come across as something for an atmospheric effect rather than being something that is a centerpiece to the song with a story to tell or emotion to recall. It's tormented gasping all the time. The first thing that really sounds like a song is "Host Over Cup".

Some of the charm from their sound begins to wear a little thin by the time we get to the more straight ahead pounding of "Rotten Scriptures". The dish out even more of a pounding  on "Yahweh Rejected" but they are also becoming boring and beginning to lose me. These songs are all around the three minute mark so they are not hard to endure. Their bass player is pretty beastly, which is not something you normally hear from this type of music. His thump adds a great deal of weight to what they do. These songs begin to become what you hear is what you get with little to no surprise. They get much rougher on the 35 second 'Vile Blessing" which is more of a lead in to"Curling Flame", They go full blast ahead here.

I'll give this album a 7, their bag of tricks quickly shows itself to rather limited and pass the half way point the moments that really engaged me become far and few between.If dense and brutal are more your thing  this does create a pretty fiendish mood. Hell's Headbangers releases this July 22nd.