Album review: Doomsday Ceremony “Black Heart”
Brazil’s Doomsday Ceremony is back with its second full-length album “Black Heart”. It gives us a successful combination of melodic heavy metal and extreme metal.
Doomsday Ceremony formed in Brazil in 2000 and they look evil. However, their music is much more upbeat and melodic than what one would expect from looking at the band.
The opening track “Vultures of War” sums up what Doomsday Ceremony is all about: a heavy metal band with harsh black metal-style vocals, melodic guitars and a mix of extreme metal and 1980s NWOBHM and power metal. On most of the album the band, despite the harsh vocals, plays less brutal, more traditional heavy metal. I like this quite different mix of some extreme metal elements with more melodic heavy metal. It has a hint of Mercyful Fate but without King Diamond’s vocals.
“I Am” is a great track and so are “Valley of Shadows”, “Slaves of Sin” and “Voice of the Darkness”. The title track “Black Heart” is an old-school 1980s heavy metal track. There are certainly bits and pieces from death metal and black metal on this album, but this is really a melodic heavy metal band in black metal make-up. The music is a bit slower (relatively speaking), a bit less brutal than what is “normal” for the extreme metal genre. On several of the tracks we get great melodic guitar solos that sound very mainstream heavy metal. Overall there is some fine melodic guitar work by lead guitarist Ciriato on this album.
At the end of the final track of the album, “Fury”, we get some out of place spoken words delivered in what sounds like lines from a poorly acted bad movie. This almost ruins an otherwise good song. Cut out the talking and focus on the music. Doomsday Ceremony has found their own distinct style and it’s good.
“Black Heart” is out now on Cogumelo Records and Greyhaze Records.
Doomsday Ceremony – band members
Moloch – vocals
Ciriato – guitar
Shaitan – bass
Rieche – guitar
Wolff – drums
