San Jose, California's newest outfit Ardra establishes itself as a ferocious five piece that blends some fairly brutal death metal with integrated melodic sections, ambient undertones as well as subtle little core influences in the form of breakdowns and deathcore verses here and there. The newly formed independent act has just now unveiled its very own debut full-length album titled Unto Leviathan: essentially eight songs of mythical lyricism, sprawling instrumentals and death-obsessed themes culminating into over thirty minutes of content. So let's talk about it.
The opening track 'Carrion Dawn' takes a little bit to get started but once it does it's pretty heavy...more so than initially expected from the album cover art alone. Anyway, the ambiance is pretty clear early on and that juxtaposition with the hard-hitting death(core) instrumentals combined with the low, evil vocals is one of the defining qualities of Unto Leviathan. Ardra also does a fair job of mixing up the breakdowns with the melodic high notes, gutturals and ambient, solo-like breaks especially in longer tracks like 'Trek for the Fallen', which happens to be my personal fave along with 'This Thing Lives'. The latter of the two songs really got me in that sorta dark, I Declare War/Impending Doom deathcore way. 'To Walk with Fire' is another heavy hitter that you can listen to down below. The titular (AKA outro) track is one that I thought overstayed its welcome a bit and could've been cut down in length and 'Hunger of the Witch' was slightly underwhelming in its repetition, though I thoroughly enjoyed most of the other songs for the most part. The production quality is one other thing I thought was very stellar, as well.
Overall, while I can compare a lot of the elements found within this release to a fair amount of other albums in or around the respective genre realms, I still liked some of the refreshing little influences it threw in the midst of all the others. For instance, the subtle ambiance towards the introduction, the core guitar riffs mixed in with brutal death-esque vox, and the varying song lengths and structures all came together for a rather cool half hour or so treat. It's slightly melodic throughout and has some of those atmospheric vibes that clash with brutal backdrops, ultimately making this release a kinda oddly balanced, yet slightly eclectic one in some ways.
Fave Tracks: 'Trek for the Fallen', 'This Thing Lives'
For Fans Of: Boris The Blade, Impending Doom
**This release is available now digitally here!**
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-Review by: Dave Raffy
Musician, reviewer, fan & promoter
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