Against the Plagues are a US Death Metal band and this is their third album.
Featuring a crushing and professional sound, Against the Plagues play Death Metal mixed with lashings of Melodic Black Metal.
Deep growls and higher screams are the singer’s weapons of choice, with both sounding feral and full of hatred.
The band manage to take the savagery of Death Metal and infuse it with the melodic poison of Black Metal’s dark soul. This mixture means that Purified Through Devastation contains a good deal of catchy and memorable content. It’s not all blasting and brutality, (although they’re quite adept at that too), and these songs have quite a bit of atmosphere when they want to. Think a combination of Immolation, Morbid Angel and The Kennedy Veil crossed with Dimmu Borgir.
The muscular sound backs up the innate strength of the songs and subtle keyboards add a nuanced juxtaposition against the bare brutality of the drums and aggressive riffs. Mood and feeling is created with melodic workouts and the band can get quite martial and epic in scope on occasion.
It’s a modern take on Blackened Death Metal that sees the band highlighting the glossier, state-of-the-art side of both genres, resulting in a well-polished album that is also very well crafted. The band clearly know what they do and do it well. As Extreme Metal goes in 2015, this is a definite winner in my book.
This is an album that spits venom and fire, one that I’m more than happy to visit again and again. I suggest you do too.
Wonderbox Metal 