The concept of a black metal album (black/death really, but they’re wearing corpsepaint) released on hardcore/metal label Victory Records still feels very strange, particularly to anyone who remembers the 90s.
There’s no need be prejudiced on these matters, though, as you’d perhaps expect from such a marriage, Erimha definitely lean more toward the symphonic Cradle Of Filth/Dimmu Borgir side of the genre rather than sounding terribly raw, with plenty of dramatic synth work.
Whether the audience for such a style still exists in the way it once did is debatable, but irrespectively, the album is a marked improvement on previous opus Reign Through Immortality. Feeling much more earnest and notably less plastic, the songs here are denser and less obvious, more slow-burning affairs and perhaps harder to get into because of it.
Happy to say, some are actually worth the effort and the emotional pull of the final, more experimental numbers suggests the band have some sort of vision emerging.
