Style: atmospheric black/doom metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Slow and crushing black metal that has a hellish atmosphere
Thoughts: Here we go. We are about to embark on a journey from which there is no return. The discography of The Ruins of Beverast is one of the strongest in the entire metal lexicon. The way that Alexander creates his compositions is among some of the best the genre has ever seen, his atmospheres are impossibly thick and the end result are albums that decimate me. This is the first of those chronicles.
Unlock the Shrine is an impossibly dense collection of songs... scratch that, these aren't individual songs. Rather these are chapters to a larger theme. The entire album focuses so singularly on the slow and increasingly infernal soundscapes that the album goes from a sense of foreboding to an all out sense of the world crashing down by the end. The individual riffs don't matter, neither do the melodies, nor do the lyrics, nor do the percussion... none of it matters because it's the atmosphere that is the great ruination.
The first two albums from The Ruins of Beverast have a distinctly obscure production to them. It's difficult to make out the individual instruments, and it's challenging to take everything in at once. To the trained ear the individual components are dissectible, however I don't think that's the point. I think the larger point here is the experience as a whole... the album as a whole. Unlock the Shrine is a phenomenal album, and in my humble estimation one of the better entries into the bands exquisite discography.
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