In ‘Reign Through Immortality’, Erimha has released a symphonic black metal album that is more accessible than most, not through watering the genre down, but instead through its supreme storytelling quality and absolute instrumental excellence. ‘Reign Through Immortality’ is an incredibly heavy album, but it’s also far more than this.
Beginning with the instrumental ‘Enlightenment’, this is an album that feels absolutely massive from the offset, even when the sheer brutality of the music is yet to kick in. The first track serves as an introduction to the album, a gentle prelude before plummeting you into the symphonic black metal brilliance of the rest of the release. The first thing that hits you as the band kicks off into ‘Ascetic’ is the devastating power of the drumbeat as it’s made instantly clear that the instrumental quality here is going to be of the utmost quality. There’s an epic feel about the music here, a quality that continues throughout the entirety of the album. The symphonic element of the band’s sound has a huge amount of depth, always handled with absolute care and authority. Erimha hurtles through this album with a huge amount of quality; everything that’s included on this album feels as though it’s there for a reason, and you always feel as though the band means every single word and note that’s offered here.
Taking away the short instrumental introduction to the album, what we have here is nine tracks that each feel like an individual chapter of a larger story, cutting a path through a captivating tale that comes complete with some absolutely incredible guitar work and a truly impressive vocal display. Heavily influenced and inspired by the likes of Behemoth, Dimmu Borgir, and Keep of Kalesin, there’s more than a hint of death metal about the music here, an aspect of the band’s sound that they combine incredibly well with the symphonic black metal heart of the album. It’s difficult to believe at times that this band didn’t even exist five years ago, and also that ‘Reign Through Immortality’ is only the band’s second studio album; Erimha sounds like a band of far greater experience than its years, and given the quality that’s displayed on this release there’s every chance that in a few years time this is an album that’ll come to be regarded as an absolute classic of the genre.
With a thunderous display of drumming throughout the entirety of the album, the great power of Ksaos’ drum performance certainly has to be appreciated, and all four of the band’s members in fact contribute incredibly well to the band’s overall domination on this release. You could certainly put it to the band that they’re not necessarily doing anything new here, what you have to appreciate about Erimha however is just how well they do this sound; the band is confident, authoritative, highly skilled, and able to combine all of these incredibly impressive qualities with an extreme sense of storytelling excellence in an album that is both heavy and highly gripping.
Erimha is a band with a huge amount of personality, and as they continue to release more music it’ll be interesting to hear how the band progresses and evolves. This is a band that is already operating at an incredibly high level, and pushing forward into the future they’ll surely continue to grow and develop as a unit. ‘Reign Through Immortality’ is an incredibly impressive symphonic death metal album, but you also get the distinct impression when listening to this album that there’s still far more to come from Erimha in the future.
Rating
[Rating:4/5]
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.
