Arches of Entropy

Here is a duo from finland playing some absolutely filthy old school death metal. Jarno handing all the guttural chants and spewing and Tommi handing all other instruments and quite capably! Right from the begining you'll get familar with tempo that is perfected throughout the album. It's not the most inventive thing put to plastic but most of us aren't listening to this style for groundbreaking ideas. There are plenty of meaty chugging riffs throughout the entire 44min album and not a single bad track in the bunch. But on the flipside of that coin there are no true standouts. And that's where the major fault of this album is, once you hear the first track you pretty much heard the rest of the album. 'In the beginning would probably be the most standout track cause it's the shortest so it makes it's impact quickly and then gets out. Most of the rest of the album hovers around 4min mark and kinda feel like they could be shaved of a minute here and there. Another standout track would be 'Ritual Ruins, which is also the longest track, but it has some extremely gripping leads played over a strong melodic base that makes you stand up and take notice while you are listening through the album. An overall good refrence point for the band is Slugathor since both are ex-members thereof.

Another issure I noticed is there are a few sloppy or awkward parts on drums that I noticed. Some sound like accidents and strange fill choices that don't quite fit into the time. Also some of the same beats are used for a majority of the song on most songs and it gets a tad tiresome when listening through on a whole. I can't fault Tommi too much so since he is more of a guitarist than a drummer, and being able to play all instruments and keep them all pretty interesting enough is a huge task to take on so he deserves many props for not resorting to a drummachine.

Production is quite fitting for the style, dirty low guitars, bass plodding right underneath, and just enough highs on the drums to make them audible. Vocals are a little high in the mix for my tastes but they don't completely drown out the rest of the music. I would have appreciated a tad more volume in the guitars, just enough to really bring home the absolute crush of the riffing. The toms also could've stood to use a bit of 'filling out', meaning a bit of reverb, or eqing to make them kinda stand out a bit when they are used instead of sounding flat.

Overall with the few flaws in the album, this is still a good quality release to add to your collection if you are a fan of midpaced crush with haunting leads.