UMUR
"Para Bhakti... Salvation" is a 2 track, 14:31 minutes long EP release by Canadian black/ death metal act Weapon. The EP was released in January 2008 by Full Moon Productions and is limited to 1000 copies.
I´ve read reviews that says that later releases by Weapon are blackened death metal, but the music on the two tracks on this EP are much closer to death metal than they are to black metal. The vocals are brutal and growling and there is an old school death metal aestethics about the release rather than a black metal ditto. Weapon are quite the adventurous act and both tracks on the EP are structurally complex for the style. The band obviously have a lot of great ideas. For instance I like the inclusion of acoustic guitars that occur a couple of times in the tracks. Not during acoustic guitar interludes but under the distorted muddy guitar wall. I like the organic quality of the band´s playing which is an asset too. Those are some of the good things about the release, but there are a couple of things that also drags it down a bit.
First of all the sound production isn´t that good. This sounds like a good demo to me, but not a professional production. It´s still oddly charming though. Secondly the guitar solos are really of low quality. The least you can expect when someone plays a somewhat melodic solo is that they hit the notes and that´s not exactly the case here.
My rating has shifted from 2.5 to 3.5 during my listen to "Para Bhakti... Salvation" so I guess I´ve ended up on the compromise and therefore a 3 star rating it is.
