ALBUM REVIEW: The Suns Of Perdition Chapter I: War, Horrid War – Panzerfaust
Canada’s PANZERFAUST are one of The Great White North’s many hidden black metal gems. In a country that is renowned for producing some of the best black metal acts and album of the last decade or so, PANZERFAUST are arguably one of the best bands carving out their own path within the underground, with four full lengths, three EPs and a split with TOTALUS NECRUM each showcasing the bands many musical talents. Their latest record, The Suns Of Perdition Chapter I: War, Horrid War comes two-and-a-half years after the release of their last EP, and stands as their first full length in over six years. Luckily, as even a cursory listen to this record will illustrate, it has been well worth the wait.
The Day After ‘Trinity’ is an incredibly eerie and dark opening gambit, with bleak, rhythmic guitars and booming drums building a huge sound with monstrous, bellicose vocals and jarring lead guitars adding to the oppressive and claustrophobic sound perfectly. It’s a fierce yet melancholic track, and sets a macabre and visceral tone for the rest of the record to surpass. Stalingrad, Massengrab takes up a very similar tone, with grating guitar hooks, bestial, rabid vocals and a monolithic, death metal tinged sound. It’s a glorious and cacophonous slab of energetic and frenetic black metal with a robust and crushing rhythm section, which also makes great use of sonorous clean vocals, adding an epic edge to the more acerbic feel of the music. Once this song comes to a close, Crimes Against Humanity provides a brief, sample heavy interlude to the rest of the album, with foreboding, crawling guitars and primitive percussion providing a sense of anticipation that sets the listener up for the albums second half very well.
The Decapitator’s Prayer proves to be another bleak, ferocious slab of blackened death metal with some fantastic rhythm sections and thunderous, descending drum lines that eventually give way to some blisteringly sharp and caustic lead guitars that stand as some of the best hooks on the whole album. The vocals likewise carve a deep and rabid path through the music, adding to the overall intensity and urgency of the music, providing an excellent, climactic track to lead the listener into the fifth and final track, The Men Of No Man’s Land; this mammoth track, spanning over thirteen minutes in length, brings the album to a close in style, building a tense, percussion heavy opening motif up to a monstrous and thick crescendo. Jumping between a sublime, almost hypnotic section and much more dense, dizzying guitar hooks, arid vocals and punishing primal percussion, this song strikes a brilliant balance between the bands visceral, aggressive side and it’s more haunting, ethereal one, with this interchange between styles and tones paying off considerably, and making this song all the more engrossing. A dark and unnerving, sample heavy passage breaks up the songs two halves, before launching back into a suitably fierce and cacophonous final motif, leaving the listener eager to hear more.
This is clearly the current creative zenith for PANZERFAUST. The Suns Of Perdition Chapter I: War, Horrid War is an incredibly impressive record from start to finish. It’s rare for a full album to be so cohesive and well put together, with little, if any, filler to be found. There’s lots of great rhythm sections on display, with lots of great, catchy and memorable lead guitars and vocals, which makes the vast majority of this record stand out from the very first listen. Although the final song could have been two or three minutes shorter, this minor issue doesn’t affect the quality of the rest of the record, and ultimately even this last, sprawling track is well thought out and fantastic.
Rating: 9/10
The Suns of Perdition Chapter I: War, Horrid War is set for release June 14th via Eisenwald.
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