The Royal Arch Blaspheme – The Royal Arch Blaspheme (2010)

With J. Gelso composing the music and N. Imperial on vocals, The Royal Arch Blaspheme is ready to torture our soul and ears with their Blackened Death Metal sound. With such a promising line-up, the band knows what old school Black Metal fans like: raw and unceasing attacks of brutality and dissonance.

With such a foul sound, The Royal Arch Blaspheme delivers 10 tracks of total blasphemy and destruction. While this self-titled album is nothing close to a revelation or re-invention of the genre, it is very direct and effective in creating thick guitar-woven atmospheres that are greatly adorned by Imperial’s hellish screams.

The guitar work is pretty solid and evokes sounds like Bathory, Hellhamer, etc. combined with some older Death Metal elements, making this element very diverse and one of the driving forces behind the band’s rawness and brutality. J.Gelso does a great job in bringing us a perfect mixture of old school Black and Death Metal with his own personal touch. Sounds like “Sevel Devils of Ejaculation” feature straight forward and destructive riffs that need to ‘fancy’ elements to be as effective as they are.

As we mentioned before, the second ‘main’ element behind this release is N. Imperial’s crushing vocal performance. We get deep hellish (and swirling) growls in ‘slower’ tracks like “Kingdom of Perversion”, but we also get more inhuman and well layered performances in songs like “Via Crucis”, a song that will surely give you nightmares.

The bass guitar is pretty well mixed with the rest of the music and is does get to sound fairly brutal in “Via Crucis” but is not as high in the mix as on the new Profanatica album. The drumming is fairly standard and changes from some typical (older) Black Metal stuff (like on “Jahbulon” and “Dead Eucharist”) to standard old school DM patterns like on “Ascension of Lies” and “Alchemic”,

Overall, this album ranges from some Black Metal songs to slower Blackened Death Metal songs that will crush your soul and make you beg for a quick death. The production of this release is very solid since it managed to be ‘crystal clear’ while maintaining the rawness and brutality of the band’s sound. If you love USBM then this release will be a worthy addition to your collection, but if you are also an old school DM/BM fan, then this release will be one of this years treasure albums.

Release: August 31st, 2010

Country: USA