Oathbreaker
Mælstrøm

I will call it N.W.O.H.G., or better yet, New Wave of Heavy Girls.

Angry girls who destroy microphones with the sound of their demonic little voices.

But Oathbreaker are not just that. They are a surge of slaps that set your face on fire. A bastard stream of heat coming from Ghent, Belgium, the HC hatred that traces the roots of the old continent and devours synapses. Without compromise. 

The door is blown open by the death-oriented blast of "Origin", which evolves into a riff of massive legatos and, with a foot on the brake, a mid-tempo straight between the head and neck, and Miss Caro’s voice is something totally abrasive, I’ve heard guys (myself included) not reach such an intensity of malice in their throat, blind bastard fury beyond the limits. The anthemic "Hierophant" burns under the skin, the guitars are a boulder, the march erupts into a furious rage, the Entombed make an appearance and spit in your face, the guitar reigns in stride with the black flames that envelop the voice in every expression, and then a solo that's a razor over the eyes. "Fate Is High" is blind despair at medium tempos, decelerations on the run, barrages, and releases of pitch-black melody, ridden by vocal madness, searching for discomfort in the cold and decayed interstices of a soul shaken by deadly convulsions.

There is not a moment of peace, and the "Sink Into Sin" suite divided into two parts is the demonstration of how Belgians can move in unusual and splendid directions, I am caught off guard when in the middle of the electric war comes an acoustic guitar, which adds a magical touch to the melody of the piece, then a silent sea, with feedback coming from afar riding waves of regurgitation and exploding on the only male voice on the album by Colin H. Van Eeckhout (does the name Amen Ra mean anything to you? no? it should, ask the Neurosis), which brings an additional burden of hoarse and decaying desperation. Then the silence that shatters on a wall of granitic hatred in "Glympse Of The Unseen" which brings out the cubic black stonersludge attributes, releasing mephitic melodies throughout its 6 minutes, with diabolical screams tearing through pauses of silence, until reaching the first and only whisper amidst rusty voice spikes. The final acoustic, noir-folkish, and splendid title track then is the demonstration of a foundational eclecticism that could lead to splendid evolutions in the event of a second album, and Caro sings, and touches the heart, an enveloping timbre, halfway between icy sensations and black warmth, frightens me and leads me to close this damn review with a torn heart.