Unholy Ghost – Torrential Rain (Olympic Recordings)
Death/black metal, brutal, relentless, unforgiving. Think Diabolic and Pessimist, which is where the band members come from, only add a dash of really, truly evil feeling to the whole thing. Hard to listen to, but extremely rewarding, mix of blast beats, guitar shredding, monotone riffs and vocals, and really disturbing atmospheres. It seems like they’ve uncovered a whole new world of playing, having some slow songs, some really complex breakdowns, and even injecting a lot of black metal influences into the sound. Nothing entirely new and exciting or that hasn’t been done before, but still great stuff.

Tracks:
1) Blasting from the get-go, never lets up. Catchy (for brutal death) with a great solo. FCCs.
2) Another fantastic solo (come to think of it, the entire album is chock full of these) and more brutal blast beats and shredding riffs.
3) Mid-paced, heavy with chugga-chug backing rhythm riffs and scaaaary vocals.
4) Thrashier, way brutal (I know, the word is overused, but trust me, it applies here), and with a winding set of riffs and stop-n-go drumming that occasionally settles into a blast beat.
5) Sounding a lot more like a normal song, with actual distinct song sections and all, it’s even got subdued drumming. Wow, it must be so painful for these guys to hold back like this.
6) Back to the full-speed blast beat and black metal riffs, only this time we get actual song dynamics and a bridge/coda with the most amazing of riffs and solos.
7) Hmmmm, a song about war. How entirely unoriginal. At least the entire song is structured like its sole purpose is to make people wanna go crazy in the pit, so it works fine for me.
8) Short, fast, thrashy, super-vicious and the drums are being original. Titled “Torn Apart”, it’s surprisingly very fitting.
9) Another slow, destructive monolith of a song, stating off with a fade-in lead, and continuing with some of the most awesome blackened death riffs I’ve ever heard. And is that a breakdown I hear? Yes!
10) Similar to the last one, seems they’ve found their comfort zone, this is a little too much Morbid Angel worship for my tastes, even though it’s got great drumming and crazy riffs. And the last minute or so is pure black metal.
11) 90 seconds of scattered drums and stormy weather samples. Original since it’s not at the beginning of the album, but just as pointless.