Decayed: The Burning of Heaven (2016)

Yep, very subtle.  We can definitely tell the opinions on Christianity held by the band due to the album title and the cover art here.  I kid, mostly because I find it very funny.  The Portuguese black metal pioneers Decayed has been around since the early 1990's, which is a very long time.  This is the first I have personally heard from them though, mostly due to Portugal not really being known for its metal.  Only vocalist/guitarist J.A. has been with the band since the beginning with the other members joining on within the last few years.

With a black metal band that has been around for as long as Decayed has, it is no surprise to hear that their style is rooted in the far more aggressive, hateful styles of the second wave bands from Norway and Sweden.  The thrash and punk influences are obvious from the riffing style, which is mostly simple and repetitive.  The album as a whole is dirty and raw black metal.  I certainly have no complaints about that, as I have frequently discussed my preference for this particular style of black metal.  The vocals are a fairly typical rasp, but not so much that the lyrics are not easily heard or understood.  The production is nice and crisp, which is something of a rarity in black metal, but which helps to really hear the instrumentation.

This is definitely not a retread of Transilvanian Hunger, despite the comments earlier about simple riffing style.  It is much more similar to later Darkthrone.  Some of the songs are quite lengthy with more progressive structures.  The band does not simply rely on one riff over and over again for each song.  In fact, the album does seem to be more of a concept album, with a couple of short interludes among the tracks.

This is a raw, dirty, thrashing black metal album.  It is exactly the type of black metal I love.  I love this album.