Purified Through Devastation

Given the fairly long period of stagnation that metal experienced in the United States following the recession of the mid 1990s, said country has had a rather difficult and chaotic time at trying to reclaim the metal spirit. Barring the occasional bright spot in the metalcore and deathcore scenes in the 2000s, most of what constitutes metal in America has found bands that either find greater success in Europe and South America playing the styles popularized in said areas, and also bands that are de facto imports from abroad despite behind situated in the U.S.’s political boundaries. Among the latter category stands the raging beast of a blackened death metal outfit Against The Plagues, born out of the ashes of the Chicago based black metal outfit Forest Of Impaled, and a band that takes more after the Polish scene of the country of origin for much of its membership than what passes for an American take on the style.

While their first offering The Architecture Of Oppression (later reworked and renamed Decoding The Mainframe) stuck closer to the band’s former black metal roots and would draw comparisons to the keyboard oriented likes of Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, Old Man’s Child and Limbonic Art, the recently unleashed sophomore offering Purified Through Devastation takes a more moderated approach in reconciling the black and death metal sides of the coin, invoking influences like Vader, post-Demigod Behemoth and their Austrian imitator Belphegor, all the while still keeping the keyboard-laced aesthetic of their last album around in a more reserved way. This resulting change can be partially attributed to newer vocalist Shaun Albro, one of the American members of the outfit who actually sounds a fair bit like Piotr Wiwczarek, though overall the production quality and guitar tone definitely has more of a death metal flavor to it.

In a nutshell, these songs still retain a black metal orientation, though they are played in a manner that is highly conducive to current death metal practices. The guitar work tends towards the blinding tremolo madness and bone-crunching palm muted stomps that are conformed to the impact-based character of death metal, and the drums likewise have a thunderous quality to them that bucks the black metal tendency towards a shimmering distant sound with a de-emphasized snare. However, the song lengths tend to drag out a fair bit longer and definitely have something of a layered structure with episodes of dense keyboard additives and a more atmospheric mixture of guitar and drum work that isn’t out of the realm of the one pioneered on In The Nightside Eclipse, though aesthetically the sound itself is closer to In Sorte Diaboli and Evangelion. There aren’t any weak moments to speak of between each respective song, but the more epic length crushers “Man’s Modern World”, “Theokratia” and “Enemy Herein” definitely punish the hardest and pack the most auditory treats.

The task of determining whether this album or its predecessor is the better offering is a bit subjective, as they are both equally well executed, though their previous album(s) held more of a unique charm as being a lighter and more black metal oriented version of Polish blackened death metal, whereas this album comes off as a tad bit more typical. It is also curious to note that Lost Horizon guitarist and songwriting Wojtek Lisicki handled the lead guitar work and some of the vocals on the older material, which given his association with the black metal style prior to Lost Horizon’s formation, made for an interesting crossroads between black and power metal whenever the solos came in, whereas the lead work on here is a bit more in line with the flashy solos heard out of Vader. All the same, this is good quality brutality with a dense atmospheric edge that should definitely enjoy a wider audience.