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UNBLESSED DIVINE “Portal To Darkness”
UNBLESSED DIVINE “Portal To Darkness”
By Dr. Abner Mality
UNBLESSED DIVINE is the newest band to take a crack at “cyber-death metal”...a mixture of electronic sounds and death metal. Lots of bands have tried their hand at this subdivision of a subdivision, with very mixed results. The pedigree of this band is pretty decent, with members who have done time in SINISTER, MALEVOLENT CREATION and DECAPITATED.
Initial impressions were not that great. The band certainly has the brutality of death metal down pat, with a sound favoring Florida style mayhem in the vein of HATE ETERNAL, MORBID ANGEL and the aforementioned MALEVOLENT CREATION. The trouble is, the sound is very generic and the early part of the album has few memorable riffs. It just sounds like “brutal death 101”. But then of course we have electro bleeps, buzzes and keys mixed in. These also sound very perfunctory and by the book. I have yet to hear any band mix futuristic keyboard sounds with death metal as well as NOCTURNUS, the innovators of the style, did it. With “Blacken The Soul”, we get what sounds like three separate songs all stuck together randomly and FEAR FACTORY like clean vocals make an unwelcome appearance as well.
I was ready to write off UNBLESSED DIVINE completely, but the band does rally somewhat in the second half of the album. “God of Darkness” actually clicks...the song has a more epic feel to it and the mix of slower, more pounding riffs and icy synth sounds works well. “The Exalted One” almost has traces of IMMOLATION in the structure and that’s never a bad thing. These two cuts aren’t world beaters but they’re not bad. Final two tracks “I Feed” and the moody “The Glorious Flames” actually start to give UNBLESSED DIVINE the feeling of being their own band, instead of the faceless clatter they started the album with.
So maybe, just maybe, something can be salvaged from this…
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