Temple of Sin

Old school death metal is all the rage these days, as everyone and their grandmother from Auckland City, New Zealand seems to be getting into the revival craze that has dominated much of the 2010s. But be all this as it may, the stylistic designation implied is a bit open-ended, as there are a fair number of sonic possibilities that arise depending on where one's influences lie. In the particular case of the aforementioned city and nation's recently born son by a decrepit seed Soul Void, the target is of a very crude and minimalist bent that will sound familiar to anyone familiar with the primitive offerings of Obituary and Dismember, as noted by the band's label Elimination Records in the promotion bit for their debut offering Temple Of Sin.

Unfortunately, while the boasted influences are very much present, the hype that normally goes along with it comes out being too good to be true. A glaring flaw in the band's presentation is the extremely raw, almost early 90s demo quality production that comes off as overly crackly and devoid of that dank atmosphere that makes a slow trudging, quasi-doom leaning offering out of the Obituary mold work. The tinny quality caused by an excessive amount of higher frequencies in the mix coming from the guitar tone and drum mix robs this of its heaviness, and the over-reliance on sampled bits from horror movies gets a bit tiresome for an EP that's this short. The EP's shortness is a bit of an issue as well, as the first two songs don't quite stick around long enough to full develop what are some reasonably solid riffs, and the closing song doesn't quite close the deal due to a lack of contrasting ideas or some sort of a solo segment to keep things moving.

All of this said, when this EP is on musically, it does a fair job of emulating the old Florida and Swedish sounds. The band's vocalist, who simply goes by Josh, is this band's best asset and does a solid job of recreating that cold, inhuman, early 90s Swedish bark that made the first two Entombed albums such forbidding offerings. The entire band is actually reasonably competent at what they do, and given a tad more time to home and develop their parts, this could have the potential to play on a equal footing with a lot of recent revival acts spawning out of America and Europe of late. These Kiwis definitely have their hearts in the right place and are channeling all of the right influences, they just need to clean up their studio production a bit, and possibly hire another guitarist who can solo in a manner similar to James Murphy or Nicke Andersson to fully close the deal.