VANHELGD — Temple of Phobos (review)

VANHELGD — Temple of Phobos album cover Album · 2016 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Temple of Phobos" is the 4th full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Vanhelgd (the Swedish word for "desecrated"). The album was released through Pulverised Records in July 2016. It´s the successor to "Relics of Sulphur Salvation" from 2014 and features the exact same linep who recorded the predecessor.

Stylistically there have been some changes though, as Vanhelgd spice up their old school Swedish death metal sound with blackened tendencies and also quite a few ultra heavy doom metal parts. The vocals are a blackened aggressive growling vocal type. The material on "Temple of Phobos" is relatively eclectic and it´s not an album with a clearly defined sound or style. It opens with some pretty harsh and brutal tracks (early death metal Darkthrone comes to mind a couple of times), but then veers off into more melodic and epic sounding territories. Initially I found the diversity between tracks to be an asset, but after giving the album more spins, I´m not so sure anymore. The impression of the album does end up being an impression of an album which is stylistically incoherrent. It´s not a major issue, but the listener should be prepared for it.

The quality of the material on the 7 track, 44:08 minutes long album is generally high though, no matter which style the band embrace. The lyrics alternate between English and Swedish language lyrics. Lyrics which are bleak and dark, and don´t exactly paint the world in bright colours. The musicianship is strong on all posts, and "Temple of Phobos" also features a powerful, detailed and raw sounding production, which is another contributing factor to the high quality of the release. Some parts of the album are quite brilliant, but the stylistic inconsistency of the material does drag my rating down slightly. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is still well deserved though.
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