TEMPLE OF DREAD
TEMPLE OF DREAD "Beyond Acheron"
By Dr. Abner Mality
Lots of "TEMPLE" bands in death metal. This one comes from a place called Spiekeroog. That's a place I just had to look up and lo and behold, it's a tiny island probably not more than a couple of miles long stuck in the North Sea off the coast of Germany. A pretty idyllic place, by the looks of it. Just goes to show that death metal is everywhere these days.
Even more surprisingly, these guys are pretty damn good, managing to sound thoroughly old school and yet multi-faceted at the same time. I see former MORGOTH singer Marc Grewe sings on their track "The Plague" and that gives you a clue what TEMPLE OF DREAD sounds like. Not a million miles away from classic MORGOTH and, by association, DEATH. The album combines bulldozing OSDM cuts like "The Plague", "Dance of Decay" and "Asebeia" with much moodier, almost symphonic tracks such as the title track, "Damnation" and "All-Consuming Fire" where dark melody plays a bigger role. These longer tracks are riff factories, with "Damnation" in particular throwing some awesome MIddle-Eastern sounding killers at you. The album ending "Hades" is a doom-filled instrumental with some great piano work...contrast that with the high velocity face-ripper "Dance of Decay".
It's a very satisfying album with a very European approach to death metal.The market is so clogged that even good bands like this can find it hard to break through, but TEMPLE OF DREAD is deserving of such a chance.