Holocaustum - Crawling Through the Flames of Damnation (2011)

   If Holocaustum might sound very familiar to someone (if it does, that's the exact sign of serious underground metal overdose), it's not a coincidence or some fake deja vu impression. There was an unfortunately short lived band in the mid '00s called as Spiritual Decay who had a very promising debut, and Holocaustum could be looked at as the continuance of Spiritual Decay.
   Not only because Miss Shawna Silvers (vocals, bass) and Mr. Charlie Baughman (guitars) also could be found in the band and probably as founding members; but it's kind of evident that Holocaustum continued from where Spiritual Decay was done. The years that have been passed meanwhile could be sensed on the album. Spiritual Decay was interesting back than, because they mixed catchy, heavy themes with a strong atmospheric influence. The concept and the idea was great, but it seemed to be in experimenting state still, and the balance wasn't found yet. The album started quite rough, but was kind of lost with time in the mist of strong psychedelic-melancholic atmosphere, that completely consumed the preferred intensity. In Holocaustum that balance was successfully found, and the atmosphere only partly came from the sound effects, because the band probably made a reasonable decision, to involves themes that are essentially atmospheric in general. That means the influence of black metal is quite frequent to find on "Crawling Through the Flames of Damnation". The blackened themes nearly taking enough important part in their music to call it black/death metal. But it's something different than what usually could be found under that style determination. That could be because the guitar plays are quite diverse, and therefore the fast blackened themes cannot take any centric role, they only meant to complete the main view, and to increase the intensity if it's needed. In total: the album sounds great, it holds plenty of enjoyable surprises and definitely counts as a strong and stunning debut.