Time Signature World of steel on bone...

Genre: death metal

Serpent Ascending's "The Enigma unsettled," which collects two previously released demos - namely, "Serpent Ascending" (2009) and "The mournful Pilgrimage" (2010) and also features a brand new track, has released a lot of praise from reviewers, and I can totally follow that.

The Finnish one-man band Serpent Ascending delivers devastating and dark old school death metal, which is primarily based on heavy and simple, but effective, intense riffs, many of which display a classic death metal character along the lines of Bolt Thrower from their heyday. And that point of departure is definitely not a bad thing, and the fact that a number of the tunes on this release are so heavy, that they border on being death-doom tunes which definitely does not make things worse. "The Enigma Unsettled" successfully blends intensity and dark atmosphere; and the atmospheric nature of the release is derived entirely from the music itself - the riffs, the tempos, the chords, the harmonies etc.

Thus, there are definitely many positive aspects to this release, but I do think that the production is too imbalanced with the vocals and drums, and bass, being more dominant than the guitars, which is a shame, since the guitars constitute the locus of a lot of the good stuff on this release.

Still, fans of old school death metal who do not care about pristine production should definitely check out "The Enigma Unsettled".