Eternal Lord

Blessed Be This Nightmare

Written by: TL on 30/04/2008 01:51:39

Now I am usually not one to be a fan of the extremest of musical styles. I preach musical aesthetics from a doctrine of contrast, and normally I find that most extreme bands do one thing extremely well and get stuck doing so. Eternal Lord has proved the exception to my preconception.

If anyone out there was sad when I Killed The Prom Queen broke up, they can stop mourning that band\'s demise and know that vocalist Edward Butler has found a new home in a band that in all ways trample his earlier one. At first listen Eternal Lord is your usual deathcore mess of growls and shrieks, breakdowns and blast beats, but for anyone able to summon up even a minor dose of attention, it will quickly become clear that todays contestants are out for more than becoming the heavy weight champions of metal.

You see on their debut album \"Blessed Be This Nightmare\" the first thing you\'re going to notice is a barrage of entropic thrash riffs, giving Bring Me The Horizon more than a run for their money. This band have got that part down to an art form. Then there\'s some by-the-books viciously battering breakdowns, also done impeccably well. Then there\'s a variation of blast beats, so mixed up and furiously delivered that the negativity I usually connect with a blast fest is deducted from the equation immediately. Add to this a contrasting vocal exchange of fire between rumbling growls and depraved snarls, both in the deeper and more extreme end of the spectrum, but still clearly distinct from each other and adding in further variation to the band\'s expression. Got all that? Now add on top some seriously haunting moments of stunning guitar melodies, sounding like the band has learnt from and exceeded Misery Signals, and you\'ve just about mixed one hell of an explosive cocktail, bound to knock you out before your time.

As if all of this wasn\'t awesome enough, add to the equation that \"Blessed Be This Nightmare\" is one of few albums where I\'ve actually taken note of the flow of tracks being put together absolutely brilliantly. The first two tracks are almost exclusively heavy before we\'re introduced to the first highlight of the cd, namely \"Set Your Anchor\", a song containing riffs that flat out SLAY, while also bringing breathtaking melodies momentarily into the mix. \"Wasps\" and \"All Time High\" bring the hammer back down with uncompromising density, until the final moments of the latter fade into a quiet and clean guitar that serves as the perfect transition into the immediately most accessible track on the record, \"I, The Deceiver\". Straight off the bat it\'s hard not to draw parallels to \"The Failsafe\" by Misery Signals, but while this song is the least blast-beat weighted on the album, it\'s still infinitely heavier than the aforementioned track, while, dare I say it, it\'s also even more beautiful in the quiet eye of the storm moment found in the middle of the song.

\"The Damned\" puts the pedal through the metal, again drawing your thoughts towards Bring Me The Horizon with its transgression between fast paced thrashy riffs and primal breakdowns, and then suddenly \"Amity\" breaks the flow of the album completely, displaying an entirely instrumental, progressive, semi-acoustic song, so beautiful in how the sliding of the strings brings pictures of raindrops on windows to your inner eye, that you can\'t believe it\'s still the same band playing. It would seem out of place if it didn\'t just sound so damn good, and when the final three tracks reinstate the heavy jazz, you\'re scooped up and carried away on the band\'s qualities so fast you don\'t have time to worry about it anyway - Just listen to the solo leading into the first breakdown on \"O\' Brothel Where Art Thou\" and you should be convinced.

As earlier mentioned, Eternal Lord\'s debut is a record built on thrashy riffage and hardcore breakdowns, however, while this might merit a metalcore label, I refrain from slapping it on - simply because thinking of whiny glued-on clean choruses and bands like As I Lay Dying or Bullet For My Valentine puts you galaxies away from this grinder of an album. Sure you might be able to find stronger contenders for heaviest album of the year, but honestly I\'m leaving it for people with longer hair and narrower minds to worry about anyway. What matters is that with the state of metal these days, I rarely feel like shaking the horns at anything, and this record somehow still makes me wish I had more hands to do it with, seeing how it both sounds like Bring Me The Horizon, Misery Signals and The Devil Wears Prada but also sends all three crying home to mama.

9

Download: \"Set Your Anchor\", \"I, The Deceiver\", \"Amity\"
For The Fans Of: Misery Signals, Bring Me The Horizon, The Devil Wears Prada
Listen: myspace.com/eternallord

Release 17.03.2008
Golf Records
Provided by Target ApS

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