Destroyer of All Things

Jacob Smith has produced a one man wall of brutal death metal with an odd but gratifying sense of emptiness. The tracks vary from brutal to a more traditional sound and then even venture to a somewhat epic death metal sound with stray touches of black.

Topics are somewhat dead on the point of armageddon and the end of mankind, just as the title suggests. He has also incorporated interesting samples that work so well with the music and topics. The intro and outro are as interesting as any of any genre, a great way to end an album.

As far as one man bands go he has definitely been realistic with what he has written. It's not pure blast and it's not over the top unrealistic drum programming. His riffs are steady and catchy along with the typical brutality you'd expect and his vocals can be heard as clear as the instruments which is almost never the case in brutal death metal. This is probably because Jacob has produced all of the albums he has done himself.

My favourite track is The End-Of-The-Begining. It has a very eerie sense of death and unrelenting emptiness which I don't normally get from brutal death metal as I normally find it rather empowering and purely brutal. It seems to incorporate death metal and black metal with it's fast beginning and slowed ending. Cool riffs leaves this one on constant play for me.

I found this release by sheer accident when looking into Australian metal for my radio show on nuclearrockradio.com and have continued to listen to it personally and play it on my show since