Dead Congregation - Graves of the Archangels (2008)

   Dead Congregation's full-lenght debut gained wide attention fast and their name became well known and notorious in the extreme underground scene.
   The album starts with an ominious melodic instrumental intro that could sound misleading, since in the followings they are definitely not even trying to pick up the same line. Their blasphemous brutal music hits like a raw, unexpected punch that could easily be a knockout for the unsuspicios listener. On the side of the noisy, heavy impression, the deep growling vocal style and the main concept; the guitar themes often referring to Incantation, if the previous features didn't serve enough well as a hint. This is a quite characteristic way how nobody else played before but Incantation, and similar slow downs are also common. Still, Dead Congregation's music is easier to go into, because melodies having bigger role at them, and theme changes aren't so frequent. There is a leading melody that creates to a massive whole with the noisy themes like in ordinary black metal, except in this case the heaviness is having exclusive role. Incantation also showed similar tendencies, but in this case it became a main direction, therefore Dead Congregation might sound audience-friendlier. Basically it's an excellent record, recommended for the fans of blasphemous brutal death metal.