Review Summary: Absolute blackened death metal classic from the KINGZ of fucking EXTREME METAL!
God Dethroned, the ultimate extreme metal band, have near perfected everything from Melodic Death Metal to Blackened Death Metal to Old School Death metal and even Deaththrash. Now this album has a much more black metal sound to this bands later work which falls into more traditional death metal territories. Fast Dissection esque guitars, sharp melodies and raspy shrieks and an evil atmosphere dominate this album, every song on this album is full of riffs and melodies and very distinguishable from each other this is black/death metal as its suppose to be, melodic, atmospheric, riff-driven and memorable.
One of the things which God Dethroned do well on this record is give the music structure and a particular sound without it becoming one dimensional and repetitive, each song is very easily distinguishable from each other and has different lyrics to accompany it. "The Somberness of Winter", which is about an explorer searching for the northern passage to the Indies but ends up lost and finding a passage to Hell. Under a silver moon about some kind of demonic rape, and the title track about searching for some kind of black magic know as "grand grimiore" each some has chorus which repeat, different tempos, everything is timed perfectly, the melody is never overused or cheesy, it fits in and makes the music all the more powerful. A good example of this would be the solo in "under a silver moon" its a moment or true beauty found in an otherwise dark and heavy record, yet God Dethroned make it fit perfectly.
God Dethroned have made a really great album with this release, if I can compare the sound to any bands in particular it would be somewhat similar to Dissection and Necrophobic, but God Dethroned really have their own sound.