Decrowning the Irenarch

After their strong debut Deathless Steel Command, Spearhead are back with an album that kicks even more ass.  It's not a major departure from the band's Blackened Death Metal - they pretty much stuck to a winning formula, with a little more Death Metal in the mix this time around.  The blackened elements are still quite present, especially the excellent vocal work, basically aggressive, in-your-face BM screeches that are even decipherable to some extent.

The sometimes annoying drum sound from the first album is gone; the drums sound great here, and that drummer sure knows how to play fast and tight, destroying the listener's ears with a thundering sonic barrage more times than I could be bothered to count.  The guitar work is just as great, the guitarists shredding like there's no tomorrow, putting out fast and heavy razor-sharp riffs one after the other and throwing in a few speedy solos.  The band already sounded tight before, but here they got even better, and the production job doesn't hurt either, delivering a clear and clean sound that nonetheless has just enough of a raw edge to it to give this bad boy some more attitude. A constant atmosphere of destruction of apocalyptic proportions can be felt through and through; it doesn't matter whether it's the fast-paced material (which is most of the album) or the slower, mid-paced passages that add a pinch of bleak darkness to this inferno.   Decrowning the Irenarch is purely and simply a Black/Death gem from a severely underrated band that belongs up there with the best of them.  Recommended.