Vehemency
Roaaar! Pure ass-kicking modern blackened death metal is to be found from here. No less, no more. If you haven’t gotten enough Behemoth’s latter era’s works, another Polish group - fittingly named Hate - is here on Erebus to provide some very crushing death metal too - and in spite of the very similar style these two bands play, Hate isn’t just a copycapt, knowing that the band was already playing death metal while Behemoth was still in its black metal infancy.
What grabbed my attention in the very beginning is the production: it’s really heavy and aggressive, and in spite of the triggered drums that I almost always despise, Erebus doesn’t sound really plastic like many other efforts in this field. For me, a stubborn lover of natural sound, plastic productions ruin whole albums, but Erebus gets my approval.
Needless to say, Erebus is executed with tight musicianship from the end to the beginning, and maybe there’s even too much technical calculation in the music as there’s some stagnation in the middle of the album where the constant bursts of energy don’t have the same impact anymore, but for the most part, the music holds my interest and sounds convincing.
In case you’re looking for proper innovation, I’m afraid that’s not what Erebus offers but, nonetheless, I find the album’s sheer power satisfying in itself. I’m usually not so much into death metal, especially this modern and (semi-)technical, but I do think Erebus is a rather successful release albeit nothing out of the ordinary.