Thulcandra – Fallen Angel’s Dominion (2010)

Fronted by Steffen Kummerer from Obscura, today we have a very impressive band from Germany. Thulcandra comes with the slogan of “the heirs to Dissection’s throne” and this could not be any more accurate. The band excels at making Death/Black Metal music unlike anybody these days.

The influences of Dissection and Emperor are clearly present, but the band takes this further with their own technical abilities. For a band that has been together since 2004, and has never release a full-length, “Fallen Angel’s Dominion” is an impressive achievement.

Kicking off with a killer mood setting instrumental song (“In the Realm of Thousand Deaths”) we are quickly immersed into this album. Sounding very different from Obscura, Thulcandra starts riffing away with “Night Eternal”, a very powerful track that sets the tone for what is to come in the next 7 songs. The mixture of aggressiveness with acoustic passages is top notch and gives a bit of a breathing room, just to be attacked with more brilliant riffing.

Through the album we get a wide variety of memorable melodic parts that most bands neglect to add into their music. These rhythmical parts are perfect to start headbanging, and complemented with the tempo changes make for brilliant songs that are both aggressive and melodic (a la Emperor). As you can expect the guitar work is top notch and is very Dissection-like, we love this combination of Black/Death Metal that has gone missing in the last few years.

The vocals are powerful enough to sound brutal, but not high pitched like BM bands tend to use. However, we would not like them any other way; they feature just the right amount of similarity with the way Jon Nödtveidt used to sing. The bass guitar has been mixed perfectly in this release to capture its contribution without getting on the way of the rest of the sound.

Drumming wise, Thulcandra’s session drummer, Seraph, does a great job in keeping up with the guitar tracks. The drumming is brutal when needed and steps back in the more melodic sections of the music. Overall, the band’s sound is very well defined and while it has similarities to the previously mentioned bands, Thulcandra does not feel like a cheap clone, or re-hash of older music.

We completely recommend “Fallen Angel’s Dominion” to any fans of Dissection, Emperor, and even most of the melodic Black/Death Metal these days. The band is very versatile when it comes to having the right amount of different elements for fans of many different genres in Metal.

Release: June 8th, 2010

Country: Germany