Soul Metamorphosis

That second part of the title is no coincidence here. In Battle played fast black metal in the vein of kindred spirits such as Setherial, Enthroned and Dark Funeral on their first and second album whilst their third offering, this here EP, showed a shift in musical style to death metal, hinting at bands like Aborted and Zyklon. Looks like this EP was the warning shot to tell the world that things had changed and it showed on their following albums. Was this change for the better or for the worse, you ask? Well, I don't really know, actually ...

So they changed style and they weren't subtle about it. This EP is total death metal with their black metal past only slightly hinted at, primarily in the speedy delivery of it all. The songs show plenty of variation and the riffing is aggressive and well executed and I tend to hear quite some Morbid Angel in there as well. The vocals are of a raspy kind, bringing to my mind vocalists of late 80's and 90's thrash/death metal bands like Exhorder and Demolition Hammer. In other words, not your standard death grunt and the vocals complement the music well. The production is pretty good. Clear, but not overproduced, and it goes well with the sonic assault delivered here. One point of critique I have is that in the title track the band plays this peculiar (somewhat proggy) rhythm that just sounds weird to my ears. After some repeated listens it seems to fall in it's place anyway, so it's just a matter of taste I guess.

So all in all, "Soul Metamorphosis" is a pretty decent and well performed piece of early 00's death metal with some slight black and thrash metal influences. Personally, I find this EP quite enjoyable but I'm going to be really honest here, I liked In Battle better when they played fast, kinda chaotic black metal that sounded batshit crazy. This EP and it's two follow up albums are just a bit too polished for my taste.