Empires Laid Waste – With the Tide Comes Destruction (2012)

Making its way from Australia, today we have Empires Laid Waste second effort titled “With the Tide Comes Desctruction”. In this 6 song EP, this band shows great promise in their super catchy Melodic Death Metal music. Perfectly laid out to build up since the first song to the last, there are excellent melodic passages and great riffing ideas through this release, and while there are a few ‘rookie’ mistakes, this band has enough skill to be really good.

Starting with the mainly Death Metal song that bears the album’s title, the band quickly delivers heavy guitars and great drumming. This track has enough variation to be a bit more diverse than your average DM tune, but still not enough to be a full on Melodic DM epic. The growls are pretty standard for a release of this kind, and might seem linear to some, but it’s DM, not a singing competition. The short “Banished To The Wasteland” delivers more double-kick brutality, and a nice meaty hooks that keep the listener entertained.

Things start getting more melodic with “Closer the End”, with a particularly brilliant melodic passage around the 3:30 minute mark until the closing moments of this track. “Home Like Hell” steps back a bit into a combination of brutality and some melody. The drumming here is quite intense, but a bit repetitive indeed, maybe some tempo changes or something would help improve it.

The good stuff starts with “Our Betrayors”, in this song the guitar work is outstanding, but the drumming is a bit overdone. “Quaken the Earth” delivers the real skills making the band sound a lot like the good days of Children of Bodom. The solos might be precise replicas since they sound oddly familiar, but they are excellent nonetheless. The overall sense of melody in this track is pretty solid and we can only hope their future songs are ALL like this one.

Empires Laid Waste clearly has skills to create very catchy and intricate music, it is their immaturity that gets them. The drumming is a bit overdone in a few tracks and some of the guitar structures are blatantly recycled. We can see this band improving in the future, and one “With the Tide Comes Destruction” you can also notice how the songs grow in quality as the release goes by. If you are looking for what will hopefully be Australia’s Melodic Death Metal giant in the future, be sure to check this one out.

Release: 2012

Genre: Melodic Death Metal

Country: Australia