Asinhell : " Impii Hora"

If you told me, Micheal Poulsen, from Volbeaqt would be killing it with an old-school death metal album, I would be hesitant until pressing play. Denmark has a solid metal lineage, so that should not surprise me. He brought along the drummer from Raunchy and the singer of Morgoth. Everything sounds big but is not overproduced, nor is it purposefully trying to sound like it was released on Combat Records. The only problem I hear is similar to what most death metal bands face, when they forsake groove for raw speed things begin to sound rushed. "Trophies" splits the difference between these two modes of playing and it works for them. 

There is a commanding chug to "The Ultimate Sin", which lyrically is a bunch of metal tropes, but the way they dig into the main riff is pretty awesome. From both a production and performance standpoint there is some great guitar going down on this album. At times it has a moshy hardcore feel to it. "Wolfpack Laws " feels more like something Sepultura would have done. The cadence of the vocals really accentuates this fact.  'Desert of Doom" has a more thrashing feel to it, making the moments when it slows into a chug the more powerful moments of the song. It does work better than when they go into the more hyper-speed-focused sections of songs. 

The vocals say in a dry mid-range growl. The title track works off the guitar riffs to carry the verses. . Lhyrically I am not sure what they are trying to describe. There is a cool guitar solo that rounds out the song. I will give this album a 9 it exceeded my expectations, while it might not be on the same tier as Obituary or Frozen Soul, this is a fun piece of death metal worth listening to.