HOUR OF PENANCE — Sedition (review)

Album · 2012 · Brutal Death Metal

5/5 · 2012-08-18
adg211288

Sedition is the fifth full-length album released by Italian brutal death metal act Hour of Penance. Since the release of their previous album Paradogma (2010) the band has parted ways with vocalist Francesco Paoli Fleshgod Apocalypse), and brought in Paolo Pieri (Shoreborn, Aborym, Kalki Avatara etc) as a replacement. Pieri also steps up as a second guitarist alongside Giulio Moschini, returning the band to a two guitar line-up as it was with their first two albums. Additionally the band had a new drummer in Simone Piras, who replaced Mauro Mercurio, but by the time of this review has already parted ways with the band himself. Sedition was released in 2012.

Sedition is one of those albums for me where after giving it a single listen I felt very much underwhelmed by the whole experience. I didn’t think the release to be bad or anything but rather one that failed to stand out. Fortunately for both me and Hour of Penance I never write an album off after one listen, and Sedition really opened up to me the second time around. This is brutal death metal with a technical death metal edge to it, carried by strong vocals and an unrelenting force behind the instrumental work.

In fact the only semi-negative thing I have to say is that for the album Hour of Penance went down the path of the brief cliché intro track that in itself doesn’t bring much to the album. It makes for a decent build up to the first proper song, Enlightened Submission, though, I will say that much for it. And from there in it’s all about the death metal.

What I like most about Hour of Penance’s sound here though has to be although at its core it is brutal death metal they don’t just focus on being brutal above all else. There are melodies which I think are very well done with the way they are integrated into the tracks as needed, and that technical edge I mentioned that spices the sound on occasion but doesn’t take it over. And once Enlightened Submission kicks off they are content to bash out songs in this vein one after the other for about half an hour’s worth of music. Not a long album by my own standards but the ideal sort of time I think for the sort of music that Hour of Penance plays since for all intents and purposes Sedition isn’t an album you’d come to for variation (and I don’t think fans of brutal death metal would want it either), and it does its work before it has time to get stale. I find the replay value in Sedition very high because of that.

A grower for sure, I have come to regard Sedition as one of the strongest death metal efforts I’ve encountered so far for 2012. More than that I’ve given the album plenty of listens building up to this review due to my track record of finding these sort of albums to lose their appeal after some time and found that any issues I’ve had with brutal death metal in the past simply do not exist in Sedition. That alone has brought me to regard the release as exceptional but even more than that, it is very well played and the production by Stefano Morabito suits the music so well that as I was writing the main text of this review I realised that despite some early misgivings if I rated the album any lower than a masterpiece tier rating it would be a crime against death metal music.

9.5/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))

more than 2 years ago
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adg211288 wrote:

more than 2 years ago

It took a few listens but it eventually made it up there.

Diogenes wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Good to see you came around on this one! :)

Wilytank wrote:

more than 2 years ago

SEDUCTION THROUGH PORN

adg211288 wrote:

more than 2 years ago

The rating I gave it in the end surprised me. My original draft rating had it in 2 star territory. It grew on me more and more with each listen I gave it.