Stortregn’s (‘downpour’) development from a melodic black metal band into a more technical, shredding death metal band with a few black metal elements has been a splendid development, and fittingly with the style shift, the band found themselves on the perfect label, The Artisan Era, literally the preemptive label for shreddy/melodic, sometimes symphonic tech death/black metal.

And with album number 6, the Swiss act finds itself as a long-running, veteran band, now consistently delivering high-standard, high-quality material, and Finitude is even better than the last excellent effort, 2021’s Impermanence.

The title track bursts out of the gates with shredding ferocity and flamenco-imbued leads, something which litters the entire album with great effect. “A Last Battle Rages On” continues the high-octane start to the album, and certainly Finitude comes out of the gate far more aggressively than I expected.

Then with one of the standouts “Xeno Chaos” (which is unfortunately not about Xenomorphs), starts a run of truly special tracks that lean a little harder into the more melodic and again more flamenco/ acoustic littered tracks with the likes of the blistering  “Cold Void” which acoustically bleeds into ‘Rise of the Insidious”, with its classically inspired solo work.

The last 2 tracks of the album though are absolutely stellar, “De Inferno Solis” and “The Revelation”. The first has some killer, melodic blasting, and the closer is the album’s best, shreddiest track.

Yet another polished, clinical, surgical album from these guys and 6 albums in they appear to have fully hit their stride and

 

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