TEMPLE OF DREAD – God of the Godless

vote
7.0

• Bands:
  TEMPLE OF DREAD
• Duration: 00:42:26
• Available from: 04/10/2024
• Label:

• Testimony Records

Streaming not yet available

With their new album, “God of the Godless”, Temple Of Dread marks a step forward compared to the previous “Beyond Acheron”, demonstrating a discreet growth in both composition and execution. The German trio, as always well rooted in old school death metal sounds, this time manages to integrate the melodic component in a more cohesive and organic way, without falling into the traps of pompous excesses that had made some moments of the previous work a bit kitsch and out of context.
The album opens with the powerful “Carnage Ritual”, a track rightly chosen as an opener for its unbridled attitude, which smacks of a declaration of intent. With a clear reference to the classic imprint of a “Leprosy”, Temple Of Dread here build a robust and ferocious composition, which starts from the true tradition of the genre and is then enriched by elements that instead look to the European death-black school. It's clear from the start that the band has honed their ability to manage the contrasts between aggression and melody, creating a sound that is more refined than in the past.
As happened in the previous chapter, this time too the group shows off a certain predisposition to vary the structures of the songs, which, while remaining within death-thrash coordinates, allow themselves some more airy and midtempo parentheses. This variety manifests itself above all in tracks like “Spawn of Filth” and “Sacrificial Dawn”, which alternate moments of pure fury in the vein of early Pestilence and Morgoth with more agile and harmonious sections, without however losing that stylistic coherence that should characterize a band of this guy. The riffs are on average solid and incisive, with a production that manages to balance the typical roughness of the genre with sufficient clarity to distinguish the nuances of the compositions.
Once again, in some cases it seems to hear God Dethroned possessed by the verve and iconoclastic spirit of the old days: in this sense, “Demise of Olympus” is another example of the group's renewed ability to play with dynamics; while remaining faithful to a sound with recognizable influences, the track presents passages that detach themselves from the frontal assault to open up to more murky and controlled moments, making the closing of the album particularly evocative.
Although “God of the Godless” certainly does not revolutionize the death metal panorama, this new sortie demonstrates an interesting maturation for Temple Of Dread, who here demonstrate a certain ability in managing rather delicate balances, while remaining exponents of death metal.” working class”, but with that panache necessary to create a work that we could define as the most complete and satisfying of their discography.