UMUR
"Impii Hora" is the debut full-length studio album by Danish death metal act Asinhell. The album was released through Metal Blade Records in September 2023. Volbeat (and former Dominus) guitarist/vocalist Michael Poulsen started the project with drummer Morten Toft Hansen (Raunchy), and the two began writing material and rehearsing in a downtime period for Volbeat. Poulsen had actually written quite a few riffs during the writing sessions for Volbeat´s "Servant of the Mind" (2021) album, which were too heavy and brutal to be included on a Volbeat album and that´s where the idea to start a new death metal project came from. Poulsen was not interested in ressurecting his old death metal act Dominus, and therefore opted to start a completely new project.
Poulsen recorded vocals for the demos the duo recorded, but he knew right away that he didn´t want to perform vocals on a subsequent album release (let alone on stage), so he asked his old friend Marc Grewe (Morgoth) if he would be interested to join Asinhell as the band´s lead vocalist, and the trio lineup was born. The bass on "Impii Hora" was recorded by producer Jakob Hansen (Invocator) and Flemming C. Lund (Invocator, The Arcane Order, Autumn Leaves) plays guest guitar leads.
Stylistically this is pretty standard heavy mid-paced Scandinavian death metal, which sometimes slows down and sometimes speeds up, but predominantly stays in the mid-paced territory. It´s contemporary retro death metal artists like Baest, Bloodbath, and Wombbath I´m reminded of and quality wise it´s in the vicinity too. Grewe has always been a strong and intelligible growling vocalist, and once again he proves why he is rightfully considered a death metal legend. He uses his slightly more aggressive and semi-growling delivery here more than his more regular death growls, but he sounds unmistakably like himself. The riffs and rhythms are less remarkable. The songwriting isn´t bad but there´s little here which stands out other than Grewe´s vocals and the well played melodic leads by Lund. I don´t really rememember any tracks off the album when it stops playing, and there were very few riffs which I found anything out of the ordinary. Let´s just establish that I expected much more...
The powerful sound production which is sharp, heavy, and brutal also lacks some grit and morbid sleaze, which would have suited this type of death metal a bit better. This sound production is almost too nice and clean. So upon conclusion "Impii Hora" is a competently written, well performed, and professionally produced album, but it´s also a bit formulaic and as mentioned above lacks remarkable riffs and generally lacks memorability beyond its playing time. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.