Review: Aetherium Mors – Drenched In Victorious Blood
Jan 07
Aetherium Mors – Drenched In Victorious Blood
To prove right off the bat they can bring the fire, the band opens their first release with Sons of Men, an angry scorcher of grinding metal and blackened vocals that eventually opens up into some dirge-like melodic death metal. The song is pretty vicious in delivery, making it a good opener that gets your attention with its in-your-face attack in order to sit you down for a fairly well varied blast of metal during the rest of the album. Picking up where Sons leaves off, Luciferian March creeps along in a down-tempo doom passages before lurching into ferocious pummelings that come fast and furious with an arsenal of biting death growls and drilling double kick. As aggressive as the music is though, there’s still room for melody, which is a big part of the songwriting. While it is not an overly predominant character, there is definitely enough of it there to keep the music from being a bland flavor of blackened death metal instead of the often dynamic and well rounded songs we get on the album.
The vocals are primarily higher register death snarls with a distinctly black metal attitude, including the lyrical content which is your average satanic fair for the genre. Guitars provide the backdrop of menacing riffing while driving the melody when it comes around. It would be nice to hear them have a little more meat in the mix however, but the drums generally batter their way to the forefront of the sonic palette. It is actually the drums where the aforementioned flaws can be found. While the playing is generally solid and effective, oftentimes they can overshadow the dynamics of the underlying instrumentation by drowning them out. It is a common issue of aural aesthetics in death/black metal, where the incessant use of machine-gun snare and kick hits can become a tiresome and overbearing focal point in the mix, rather than the driving accentuator that it should be. Thankfully, this is not a glaring issue that makes itself apparent often on the album, instead it is only occasionally noticed as a minor but forgettable annoyance.
The band works with a well developed toolset for a debut effort, and aside from a few somewhat minor flaws on the production side of things, the listener might assume that Drenched in Victorious Blood is a second or third release from a band with more under its belt. Mixing together both an aggressive go-for-the-throat attack and a more melodic and expansive style of death metal, and seasoning it with a unhallowed flavor of blackness works well for Aetherium Mors’ introductory release. The band manages to keep the sound fresh through the entirety of the album, preventing any deja vu moments from track to track. There’s nothing extraordinary or truly stand-out here, besides a few memorable and devil horns worthy moments of chest pummeling metal made by good use of dynamics and impact, but the sound overall is solid and consistent. The most welcome aspect of the album’s presentation is the unadulterated quality in the delivery, both in songwriting and production. Much modern melodic death metal has an overproduced and washed out sound, while Aetherium maintains a raw and almost gritty delivery in their music.
While a few tweaks here and there, such as the drums melding with the mix better and perhaps the vocals taking a bigger role in the melodic lines would make for a stellar first album, the effort is nonetheless a downright respectable showing. Drenched In Victorious Blood comes fast, hits hard, and keeps the listener’s attention with subtle melody and songwriting that does not repeat itself anymore than is necessary.
8/10
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