Ascended - Temple of Dark Offerings (2009)

   Even though Ascended isn't famous about their productiveness, the few times when they were ready to act was definitely impressing. 
   "Temple of Dark Offerings" is only an EP with 4 songs, but it's musical richness makes it outstanding. Similar to Finnish death metal in general, Ascended also preferred to operate with catchy leading melodies, that also serving as a contrast on the side of the rough, noisy primitive themes. But they also liked to build these melodies forward instead of simply keeping it only as a repetitive feature. So this way both rythm and lead guitar themes having their own ways, but even if the second's role isn't constant, it's still enough frequent to make this impression. It might not sound surprising in metal music, but in death metal, and in death/doom (like in this case) it's not so usual. Ascended isn't an ordinary death/doom band, partly because of their musical diversity and melodic themes, and partly because they didn't build on heavy sound that much. They aren't so far from the melodic death subgenre either. They preferred to switch between middle and slow speed, but occasinally there are also some intense hammering parts to find too. The great sound of the drums is even more enjoyable when they speed up. Mostly the extremely deep, Chris Barnes-like vocal style serves with the necessary heaviness. It's effective enough to not miss the heavy feature from the music. The sound is high quality too, and basically there is no mentinable weakness to find on the EP, in this form it's an excellent record.