the Ruins of Beverast : "Exuvia"

 This German project is back in less than  a years time with more music. This time it seems like things are going in a darker more death metal direction. The album Opens with the title track which finds this project feeling more like atmospheric death metal with major melodic touches. Clean sung vocals are sprinkled in. The guitar solo towards the end really rips and makes it hard to hate on this guys for opening their album with a fifteen and a half minute song. There is a doomy and dark vibe to "Surtur  Barbar Maritime". The double bass is really killer and the arrangement is strange enough to lure me in. Things stay dark and creepy for "Maere". The overall mood of this album is pretty incredible as it takes you on a journey root in a throbbing darkness coated in fog.


They use lots of layers, even what sounds to be bag pipes going into "the Pythia's Pale Wolves". This song also uses an almost Alice Chains like minor harmony in the clean vocals that start it off.  By the end of the song it accelerates into a more blackened death. The vocals dropping down in to a wild feral growl that gurgles in the distance."Towards Malakia" feels almost more like a Urfaust. It even has the low baritone vocals that are sung at a bellow. The song drones along on a similar riff before breaking into blast beats which is the only part that really strikes me as being black metal.

"Takitum Tootem" works off more of a chaotic drone. Low gurgled death metal with an evil sounding atmosphere to it. It does build up after a chanted break down into a more sonic swell that is suitably the high point and brings the needed climax. However as a whole I don't think it is as compelling as what they achieve earlier in the album. Overall this album is pretty fucking incredible in terms of what the create as far as the mood and the over weight of the darkness these songs summon. This used to be a project that was in my periphery and I checked out when they released something , but this is their best work to date and places them on my radar. I'll give this a 9.5.



This is being released on May 5th.