Review Summary: Average first outing by middle eastern black metallers
This is going to be short as there isn't a great deal to say about this two track demo. First of,
Anubis' Army Guided by Hades is the first release by Arsh Anubis, the band formed by Arcane (Weston Cage) after the demise of his previous band Eyes of Noctum, they play what they call Middle Eastern black metal, and this is their first outing, a two track demo with an intro and one real song based on the fantasy kingdom they have created called Egympus.
First off, the intro, a three and a half minute venture called
Alseera starts of with an Egyptian/Middle Eastern sounding music and a distorted voice over the top, and continues in this vein for the entirety of its length, with more instruments adding to the sound as it goes, such as Egyptian drums and different voices, whilst this is all very good sounding, bearing a bit of atmosphere and setting the sound of the band up nicely, it is far, far too long and does grow boring towards its middle. Also the voices are too loud and get annoying, and draw attention from the music, which is well composed and decent sounding.
Then comes the only song on the demo, the title track, starting with some fancy guitar runs it then veers into a rather, un-black metal sounding riff, if anything sounding like a heavy metal riff with a bit of distortion, but when the vocals join it starts to make more sense, the guitar fits well with the vocals, which are deep roars mixed with high shrieks that are reminiscent of Ihsahn and Dani Filth in their glory days. This is mixed with a middle eastern style clean vocal and it the song starts to come together well. A short guitar solo appears at the end to round of what is a decent enough first song from the band.
Overall, this is a disappointing first outing from a band bearing the vocalist of Eyes of Noctum, a very decent symphonic black metal band, the main issue here is that its too short, only two songs, both around the three minute mark, and the only real track is rather average. its not terrible however, and hopefully the first full album will bear fruit.
