Rhino - Dead Throne Monarch (2008)

   Rhino showed up as genuine band that sounded like to represent the two main directions of the actual modern metal scene the same time: the simple, raw approach that's effective by it's wildness, and the complex style mixes. That might sound as a paradox, but completely correct about their music, since it was definitely not unifacial.
   These two directions might be difficult to manage in one project, and it's kind of impossible to to create this way something unified, except if a band is directly exaggerated on many levels. At Rhino even the style detemination is problematic, since they preferred to show two different aspects: an aggressive sludgy and thrashy approach and a slower doom and progressive metal influenced way. These mostly showing up separately, but to switch for short time from one to another is also not rare.  If it wasn't enough, the album also holds some occasional surprises by instrument selection: an acustic ballad took place there too and if the listener pays attention, saxophone could be also discovered. The main view is quie diverse, but the noisy sludgy sound bonds the chaos into a whole. Their music might be not the easiest to go into after first listening, and both the raw sound and the complexity are responsible for that, plus coordinating them together in mind, but it's definitely worth for more tries. The album represents high quality production and the band counts extraordinary in the main metal scene.