UMUR
"The Embodiment of Darkness and Light" is the debut full-length studio album by Australian death metal act Aeon of Horus. The album was released in November 2009 and is a self-released affair.
On "The Embodiment of Darkness and Light", Aeon of Horus play technical/ progressive death metal. The tracks are pretty complex in structure and there is an emphasis on technical playing. There are melodic playing too though and atmospheric sections. While the playing is skillfully executed I´m not as impressed by the songwriting. There doesn´t always seem to be a goal to the many ideas and sometimes the songs sound like they are just made out of lot of different ideas but not with a full song in mind. In that respect the music on "The Embodiment of Darkness and Light" somewhat reminds me of the music by an act like Anata. That means a lot of skillful technical playing and impressive ideas but songs that lack memorability and direction. The fact that the sound production is a bit thin (I can´t for the life of me detect that there is any bass playing on the album) doesn´t help on my impression of the album either.
So all in all "The Embodiment of Darkness and Light" is a pretty standard technical/ progressive death metal album. The most interesting thing about the album is the musicianship, so while the tracks come off a bit disjointed and lacking memorable moments, the strong musicianship saves much. I guess a 3 star rating is warranted.