FMA Reviews: Hour of Penance: Sedition

Originally reviewed here.

Hour of Penance is another band that really does technical death metal well. They combine brutality with technicality with some fantastic results, ending up sounding like a more technical version of Nile. The brutality never lets up on this album either. Hour of Penance kick things into high gear in the second track, after a melodic introduction, and never lose their energy. The result is a punishing and intense album that threatens to crush the skull for about a half an hour or so before it is finally over. The only reprieves are the few seconds in between tracks.

What Hour of Penance do well on this release though is to weave some incredibly melodic guitar leads throughout the otherwise colossally heavy riffing. And the lead guitar has a terrific tone to it as well, adding to the distinctiveness. It is almost beautiful in an otherwise ugly sound.

The songs on the album do tend to sound somewhat the same by the end. The nice thing about Hour of Penance is that they do not overstay their welcome though. The songs are all reasonably short, none of them are longer than five minutes. The album itself is fairly short as well. The band just kicks the listener's ass over and over for half an hour and then calls it a day. That detracts somewhat from the fact that the songs kind of run together. So at least if they are not totally original, they make things quick and move on.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I think I would still prefer Spawn of Possession and Gorod over Hour of Penance from technical death metal albums released last year. But Hour of Penance is plenty good.