The Pitch: Minnesotan progressive, atmospheric black metal band Amiensus return from their breakout album, Ascension, with some impressive strides forward. FFO: Enslaved, Immortal, Schammasch
What I Like: When Amiensus reached out to me back in 2015 to review their debut, they mentioned that they "don't consider themselves to be a black metal band." I feel as if that mentality may have somewhat changed during the recording of All Paths Lead To Death. While the progressive elements have remained, there is a much stronger focus on grim and aggressive darkness. This is apparent from the very beginning of "Gehenna," which aside from the occasional clean vocals could have shown up on an Immortal album. The guitars have a similar thrashy, icy feel for much of the duration; with plenty of blastbeats to boot. And even the aforementioned singing has a very Enslaved kind of feel. These guys have taken the best of both second wave and more recent progressions of the genre and rolled them into a very focused 30 minutes. While it's not quite as expansive as Ascension, I argue that this album has taken all of the band's strengths and very effectively boiled them down to a lean and mean black metal machine.
Critiques: Not much to say here. I feel as if Amiensus took to heart pretty much all of my previous criticisms and really put me in my place. My only question is what comes next? How do you step it up from here? And please do keep playing with the clean vocals and harmonized guitar solos.
The Verdict: A mega step forward from a talented little group that deserves so much more attention. I didn't even know they had a new album out until it showed up from a fellow reviewer on our Transcending Obscurity best of May list. Much thanks to the quick response from the band when, this time, I was the one reaching out to them. Throw these cool dudes your support at Bandcamp.
Flight's Fav's: Gehenna, Mouth of the Abyss, Desolating Sacrilege