DEATH AND LEGACY – D4RK PROPHECIES
LABEL: Art Gates Records
RELEASE: April 14th, 2023
AUTHOR: Matthew McCune
01. Damned
02. The Unnamed Shadow
03. Beyond The Veil
04. The Fallen
05. Eternal
06. The Dark Side Of Me
07. The Enigma Of The Sands
08. The Crawling Chaos
09. Dying Life/Dying Lie
10. An Ocean Of Sorrow
Does the sunny weather have you down? Are you tired of all the cheer and joy that accompanies bright weather? Does your beachwear attire come speckled with a healthy dose of pentagrams? If you answered yes to one or all these questions, I have the remedy for you!
Packing the one-two melodic and brutal punch in the face that we all crave, Spanish melodeath outfit DEATH AND LEGACY bring us their explosive fourth studio album “D4rk Prophecies“. With an already impressive year for melodic death metal, how does the alphanumeric album hold up amongst a crowd of certified bangers?
Kicking off the album with “Damned“, we are introduced to creative components such as kick ass rhythmic integrity, catchy hooks and a beauty and beast vocal style which will play the major roles in the duration of the album. Once we are given our ingredients, the band continues the journey with “The Unnamed Shadow“ featuring Tom S. Englund from Swedish progressive metal band Evergrey. Unison unclean and clean vocal dominate the track, offering the listener a type of sonic dichotomy as opposed to the “one clean verse, one unclean verse” trope that melodic death metal is sometimes plagued with.
Voyaging on, “Beyond The Veil“ gives us a macabre intro into an explosive blast-beat-driven journey that perfectly matches the energy on the cover of the album. Perfectly playing to my symphonic black metal tastes, I found this to be the standout track on the album. A virtual fantasy landscape of freezing Scandinavian mystique draws the listener in closer to create more tension for upcoming tracks.
Up next is “The Fallen“, a standard melodic death metal banger which thrusts us back on course before we are introduced to the beauty of “Eternal“ featuring Jessie Williams from Ankor. A perfect duality wrapped into a 3-minute course, the song gives us the razor blade and nails toughness of vocalist Hynphernia contrasted with Williams operatic and euphonious presentation that proves an energetic and delightful performance.
“The Dark Side Of Me” kick us back to reality while “The Enigma Of The Sands“, an interlude track, gives us an almost trance-like adventure of intrigue and Middle-Eastern dreamscapes.
“The Crawling Chaos“, a track that does not crawl by even the most generous of definitions, keeps the steady rhythm of the album on course while somehow exemplifying both experimental and regimented elements. The penultimate number “Dying Life/Dying Lie“ brings the energy level to an all-time high before ending the album with the introspective “An Ocean Of Sorrow“, providing a fitting end to the journey of the album.
WEBSITE: https://deathandlegacy.com/en
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/deathandlegacy