Avant-Garde Death Metal... Never heard of this genre but I guessed it was something like progressive death metal. I wasn't quite right but  it is more of several genres having a musical intercourse with each other. Bands like The Monolith Deathcult or older bands such as Nocturnus play this kind of music. I was looking forward to review this.

 

 

-The first of the 5-song album is the song 'Der Wanderer Über Dem Nebelsee'. After listening to the first 40 seconds of this song, you think this an ordinary death metal albums with some synthesizers in it. Nothing is true because EotS lets you feel the weird type of combination of synthesizers and abrupt change of pace in the song. With this in the back of my rather confused head, the next song already wants to surprise me.

 

-The song 'Hollow Machinations Of The Foul Spirited' goes deeper into your mind than every other type of metal you have experienced. Not because its melodic but it has a special message behind it. Take a look at the tracklist and you will see this song and song number 4 have similar titles but it tells a story about 2 visions of the same girl. Imagine a small devil and a small angel on your shoulder. Those two aspects are combined with skullbashing music and abrupt, but not annoying, changes of musical pace.

 

-The third song listens to the name of 'Trapped In This Massive Process'. This song starts of like a song that could have been used by an industrial metal band. Especially by the legendary industrial band Static-X.  This is practically a heavy version of Static-X, which I really don't mind! The perfection and simplicity of playing their instrument and mixing skill is outstanding. Even the small synthesizer intermission is of high quality. This is the more easy song on the record but that doesn't make it bad.

 

-Then there is the fourth song on the album: 'Foul Machinations Of A Hollow Spirit'. As you read about the second song, this is the other song that combines both stories from different point of views.

Foul Machinations Of A Hollow Spirit is more electronic than the previous songs. Many new bands use this in metalcore or deathcore but I never heard it this intense in death metal. They seem to pull it off quite good. You will have to listen to it more than once because when you listen to it at the first time it seems quite chaotic.

 

-The last song of this special record: 'A Scarred Horizon'. Small elements of slam death metal are combined with the feeling of (surprisingly) black metal type vocals. That combination blows my mind because in some way it merges beautifully together along the synthesizers. This was the last surprise that EotS had for me!

 

A cd where I had no expectations of. The genre said Avant-Garde Death Metal and I thought why not give it a shot. I am glad that I did and this album deserves a 8.5 out of 10. It may confuse some metalheads and most of them give up after the first listen to it. An amazing special album by Empire Of The Scourged.