Halberd - Remnants of Crumbling Empires (2014)

   The concept of war isn't a rare thing to find in extreme metal, but somehow Halberd's one and only album approached the topic from another, yet rare perspective. They didn't try to focus on the brutality and overwhelming intensity of war as it would be usually expected. It was more like the perspective of history nerds embedded into the mix of slow heaviness and melancholic blackened atmosphere.
   On the album the combination of old school death and doom metal themes are dominant, and the sound also has strong early '90s touch. Black metal influences are frequently returning not only in menacing themes and by atmosphere, but the vocal style also often switches to blackened cawing. This works pretty good during the extended slow downs by making the gloomy doom more diverse. However, black metal influences never taking the lead completely or could prevail, only having completing role. Relying on this solution could give an excellent black/doom too by the way. But when the opportunity could be given, old school thrashing death themes taking over. "Remnants of Crumbling Empires" is way more technical and experimental than how ordinary death/doom or blackened death albums used to be. If the goal was to avoid turning monotonous, it's definitely working even in case of song lengths over ten minutes. Something always keeps happening during the slow downs. A catchy leading theme, a tempo switch step by step, vocal style switch, stronger atmospheric effect. And the album kept its unity seemingly with ease, that's the evident sign of great songwriting. 
   In total "Remnants of Crumbling Empires" might be enjoyable for the fans of death/doom, old school death and black metal.