Weapon - From the Devil's Tomb (2010)

One year after their crushing debut full-length “Drakonian Paradigm”, Canada’s mystical warmongers Weapon return with another brilliant Black/Death Metal assault with “From the Devil’s Tomb”. The band’s rich and multi-textured approach to the genre makes them one of the most devastating bands these days that mixes old-school elements with dynamic songwriting.

As with the band’s first full-length, “From the Devil’s Tomb” features a highly charged mystical component behind the music in terms of lyrics and concepts, that is greatly brought to life with crushing guitar melodies, powerful riffs, intricate drumming and multi-faceted vocals. The band has greatly matured in one year, making “From the Devil’s Tomb” twice as chilling, and more technically impressive than “Drakonian Paradigm”.

Since the first track (same title as the album), the band creates this mystical aura around the album that never let’s down and only gets more and more effective as we progress through the release. The ritualistic sounding beginning of this album quickly sets the listener into the correct mood to fully appreciate this album. The guitar riffing is top notch, and when combined with the elaborate drumming is almost orgasmic (in a musical way).

After a very powerful opening track, we have several tracks that while more straight forward are still very effective in keeping the atmosphere and contain some impressive songwriting skills. There are plenty of crushing riffs with hyper-fast drumming sections and of course some nice tremolo-picking riffs here and there, very well layered with the rest of the elements and never overly abused. The mid-point of this release is brought by the “LEFTHANDPATHYOGA”, a very nice instrumental breather that is very melodic and well crafted.

“The Inner Wolf” features a more atmospheric touch to it with some eerie keyboard sounds, making the beginning part of this song sound very creepy and effective. The band continues to add wood to the fire with the next two tracks, but in a different way than in the ‘first half’ of the album since things feel a bit slower paced but equally crushing. The ending of “Trishul” is probably one of the most crushing sections of the album and our favorite part.

Overall, we think that Weapon has achieved almost perfection (once more) with “From the Devil’s Tomb”, this is an album that we can listen to over and over and never get tired of it. There are just too many little details that make this release have a high replay value. The band’s sound has been somewhat enriched from their last release and we can’t even imagine how good they will continue to get over time. A most buy album for fans of Black/Death Metal.

Release: November 23rd, 2010

Country: Canada