Crypt of Kerberos-World of Myths/Pyaemia-Cerebral Cereal/Aletheian-Apolutrosis/Aletheian-Dying Vine

I'm not too into occult/satanic/pagan influenced material but there's so many bands like that out there. This band is death metal with occult influences, but i mostly like them for their amazing talent. Recently they reformed and their guitarists are sick of shredding on 6 strings and are building 8 stringed guitars for maximum sweeping, tremmolo and other techniques. My cd-r copy wasn't great quality (track 1 and 6 skipped a bit) but the musicians show a good mastery of their instruments. The album clocks in at only 33 minutes and change and i prefer it this way. I look forward to their new release and getting a hold of their best of album from 2005 too. Overall Rating: 7.5/10I'm not too into brutal death metal but this band is defenitely got the umph i needed to keep me up to do homework in the early hours of the morning. This is a usual gorefest of a brutal dm band, singing about gore, cannibalism, and sadism. And of course how can you be a brutal dm band without a band name that is a title of a disease. Pyaemia is a type of septicaemia that leads to abscesses usually caused by staphylococcus bacteria. This album has its usual moments of brutal riffing but then also has a few really crazy riffs like track 6 "Blood Spewed on my Face" and track 7 "Malodorous Rancidity" with extremely talented bass riffing. The vocals aren't anything special either, the usual gutteral brutal vocals with only about 3 high screams in the whole album. The guitars are what make this band worth listening to. Although they're low they're very technical riffs make up for it. Overall Rating: 7/10
I've always been into all the heavy christian bands, this one i have been having a hard time getting into. Aletheian's guitarist is working with one of my favorite bands Becoming the Archetype, and working back and forth between the two. So recently Aletheian hasn't pumped out new material (their reissue of The Dying Vine is expected out on metal blade/ironclad records later this year {2008}). This album clocks in one second under 40 minutes and alot of the material was EXTREMELY talented. The Guitarists show extreme mastery of sweeping, tremolo, and other techniques. Alex Kenis (the one also in Becoming the Archetype) has always been more committed to doing stronger and excessive solos on this album. The two guitarists make up a random riff and then one plays it in a higher octave for all of the songs. Then the one guitarist solos but you can barely hear him in the background because he's rhythm guitar and then Kenis blasts in with his solo. This is practically every song. It really takes away from the quality of the album even though these guys are so talented. The Drummer also shows good mastery with very technical progressive drumming but it mainly follows the guitar which makes the drums also take away from the album because the guitar and vocals and interludes of choral arrangements in the song don't go together. So mainly there are 3 parts of Aletheian that are totally different: The guitar and drums, The vocals, choral arrangements, and spoken word, and the bass. The bassist is totally out there doing his own thing and in the 2nd track he blasts in with the most amazing bass solo i've ever heard, this is mainly the backbone of the album to me. The vocals are ok...They're black influenced death metal vocals and i'm not too into black metal. Their work can be mastered alot better if they cut down the ambiguous crap and get more seriously into it. Overall Rating: 6/10I recorded both Aletheian albums surprisingly onto only one 80 minute cd-r. Apolutrosis is 39:59 while this album is slighty shorter at about 10 seconds short of 37 minutes. This album has better recording quality and more spectrum and good range on the vocals. The guitars are alot less ambiguous but still have more work to do. The drums sound exactly the same. I could barely hear the bass, which really upset me. This album has been reissued once in 2006 and is being reissued again this year (2008). The screams sound the same but the vocals have better depth to them. The backbone is the center of the album (tracks 4-6) that just blast in, and catch you by surprise with loud blasting technical guitar and drum beats. Better quality than the last album but i still need more convincing to like them more. Overall Rating: 6/10