A return to violence for As The World Dies.
After a relatively low-key debut album in 2022, Jay “Crikey” Price (vocals, Victormonica), Bill Richmond (bass, Pemphigoid), Chris McGrath (drums, ex-Ashen Crown), Scott Fairfax (guitar, Memoriam, ex-Massacre) and their new guitarist Darren Mcgillivray (Wrath of Man, ex-All Consumed) sign to Reaper Entertainment and unveil Nebula, their second album.
While the opening moments of Apophis feature some rather futuristic keyboards, it’s not long before the Death Metal elements arrive to give this composition a much heavier, even sometimes angst-ridden tone, as found on Consumed and its jerky riffs. The vocal parts reinforce this constant aggressive tone, which the musicians feed with their imposing riffs, but despite a very present old-school touch, we note a persistence of samples, as on Dark Oblivion, which displays its heavy aerial darkness while remaining on the rage. Leads also bring a few melancholic notes that counterbalance the aggressiveness with soaring tones, before joining I Am The One via the cosmos, leading to an assumed gentleness before the heavy sound resounds once more. The catchy patterns accelerate perfectly to give the track a wilder edge, before finally joining Blind Destiny’s raw energy, where the band adds dissonant harmonics to create a rather moody, apocalyptic effect. The band’s oppressive groove picks up again with the slow Playing God, which boasts a much more theatrical, simpler but just as massive sound that accommodates both saturated vocals and samples, the latter of which also haunt the opening moments of Voices Of Angels, the longest composition on this album. The sound is also rather minimalist and haunting, as on the previous track, but we sense that the drums are more directive, sometimes leading the rhythm to livelier tones, particularly towards the effective final that leads to Under A Dying Sky, where the tone is once again rather dark and pessimistic. A slightly brighter touch can be heard at the start of Final Resting Place, but it is quickly distorted to confirm the climate that has prevailed since the beginning of the album, leaving us to hover with it before closing, for owners of the CD version, with Consumation and its very tortured climate, especially as regards the vocals, which go from powerful scream to plaintive growl while the riffs hit us regularly.
As The World Dies‘ style has taken a much more impressive turn with Nebula, and even if the riffs sometimes tend to dip into other more modern styles, the basis of Melodic Death stays.
85/100