Recently I have been getting a lot of synth/keyboard heavy metal of various styles across my desk: Hope for the Dying, Rapheumets Well, Enthean, Winterhorde, Elvaron, The Devils of Loudun, Pathways, Hyperion, and this, the solid second effort from France’s Blood Ages.

Blood Ages’ take on metal is death metal with a Middle Eastern flair similar to Nile. Not surprising as the album is a concept piece based on a fictional Egypt-like fantasy world, but within those confines you also get a bit of a Rome-vibe akin to Ade and Ex Deo (and there is some latter Kataklysm in here too). The music backing those themes comes across as decent mix of those bands, also maybe with just a smidgen of deathcore as there are some inhaled reeeeees and some breakdowns (“From the Void to the Throne”, “The Ritual: Soil of the Crawling Chaos”.)

But everything comes together pretty well. The epic, Arabic keyboards are sumptuous but not overdone and blend well with the big burly riffs using suitably militant chugs, marches and blasts. The sand whipped keys are both blended into the songs (mostly starting and finishing) and a couple of oneiric interludes (“Collapse”). The songs are by no means world beaters or game changers, but there is some good stuff in here like the start of ‘He Who Came to Defile the World”, the eight and a half minute “Backstab” with a slow burning opening few minutes and more melodeath canter of closer “The Maze”.

In all, a solid release that checks all the death metal boxes for me, but the added bonus of some epic synths is even more for me to like, and a solid young band I will be keeping an eye on. Mighty Music seems to have released a good death metal record, so there is that too.

[Visit the band's website]

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