EZURATE – Eve of Desecration

This album is Ezurate’s third full-length release, and features a recording value just high enough to capture the technical mastery this band has of their instruments, while not losing the grit that is so important to the sound of black metal.  Ezurate plays a brand of face-pummeling black metal, opting for an all-out assault on listeners with raging blast-beats and blisteringly fast guitar riffs and soaring solos.

The album opens with a brooding intro in “Rise of the Immortals” before the aural assault begins with the track “Invocation of the Seven Gates.”  The constant attack becomes almost mind-numbing, and just when you think you have had enough, the band changes course, like on the acoustic track “Blackthorns and Crimson Blood,” which gives you just enough time to recover your hearing before the mayhem resumes.

Where Ezurate get most interesting is in songs where they lose the blast-beats for a bit, and experiment with other rhythms, like on “Black Cross of Berziers,” the strongest track on the album.  The epic track “Metamorphosis of a Lycan” is another excellent cut, which while not losing the blast beats, has some of the best riffs on the album, and ends with an interesting acoustic outro.

Vocals are solid throughout, with the high, screamy sound that you come to expect from black metal — but don’t expect to find anything profound in the lyrics.  This is Satanic black metal, and the themes and subjects addressed in the lyrics, are pretty par for the course for bands in the genre.  Not that you will care about lyrics as you head bang until your neck snaps listening to this.

(Rotting Corpse Records, PO Box 306, Chicago, IL 60690-0306)