Asag - Asag (2007)

   Asag's debut album was basically the remastered version of their demo with an extra song. But even by knowing this, it's more like a compilation EP with songs that have been written and recorded in various times.
   That's the thing that makes the debut interesting, as it shows the development of the band's music from a raw, strongly traditional Norwegian black metal influenced form, through a few experimental songs to the forming of the band's own style. It might have been a journey that took a couple of years. As the album goes on, the songs getting better step by step both by sound and composition. Less unified than what should be expected from a debuting black metal band, but therefore a more diverse and exciting record than usual. Starting from the traditional, strongly atmospheric path the band involved both raw black metal elements and catchier themes. By the sound the band also focused more on enjoyability, than on misty atmospheric sizzling. In total "Asag" ends up in a pretty aggressive tone, that's more common to encounter in Mediterranean regions, where generic black metal audiences not necessarily would look for the representatives of the genre. For black metal fans it's definitely a rare and exciting (dark) gem.

shEver - Ocean of Illusions (2007)

   Even though long ago the members of shEver declared that black metal was their main influence, they've debuted with an excellent death/doom album.
   The combination of death and doom metal has a long history, but unfortunately most old bands disappeared or changed style after one or two albums. In the late '00s this style counted as something unexploited partly because of this, and partly because death/doom bands didn't spark wide attention, so plenty of similar projects showed up. The effectiveness of "Ocean of Illusions" lies in the good mixture of simple melodies and heavy sound. The repetitive themes during decent song lengths with the assistance of a strong background atmosphere and clear female singing gave a deeply sad basic impression. By the screaming/growling vocal style and the heavy sound it turns tragic and desperate, but also gains a very powerful effect. The way how the songs were composed could serve as a good example for perfection inside the borders of this style. The appearance of female musicians in metal genres doesn't count as exceptional anymore, but in the case of full female line-up on the extreme metal field things are getting more interesting. Especially if they create something that gives a different perspective for a genre like shEver did, without experimenting with anything new. "Ocean of Illusions" is probably the best death/doom metal album that was released since the early '90s have passed.

Dethklok - The Dethalbum (2007)

     Somewhere deep within the virtual world of ironically self loathing death metal bands, your favorite nighttime TV show characters of Dethklok pull their shit together long enough to gift your meaningless lives with their explosive debut album The Dethalbum (no pun intended). What's cool about this album is that it's essentially a musical walk through of your favorite episodes from season one of Adult Swim's comedic parody cartoon show Metalocalypse. But instead of musical snippets abruptly ended with multiple macabre fan deaths, you're treated to extended full length versions of the songs from the TV series, including a couple of bonus/unreleased tracts.
     As any album worth listening to in the death metal community, sprinkled with tiny bits of hatred and controversy towards whether or not Dethklok should even be considered real metal or not, The Dethalbum is a mixture of melodic death metal and repetitive chugging. If you're able to look beyond the initial satire that is the entire essence of Dethklok's being, what you're left with is a band that is able to reach it's audience with what could be considered a type of visual audio that is it's music. Even if you've never seen an episode of Metalocalypse, listening to songs like "Bloodrocuted" or "Briefcase Full of Guts" leave an extremely purposeful aesthetic that is sure to melt the heart of any hardened death metal fan, as long as they aren't too hardened to enjoy a bit of self deprecating humor every now and again.
     

Abysmal Grief - Abysmal Grief (2007)

   If anyone may thought it's not possible to show anything new in doom metal that's different from the ordinary Black Sabbath, Candlemass or Cathedral influenced way, Abysmal Grief proved that it's definitely wrong. And they did it by not even showing up with anything extraordinary.
   Their debut starts with rain like if it was a necessary requirement in the genre, such as the strongly occult lyrical concept. But their way is closer to what occultism was in the 19th century, when similar "entertainment" didn't count as the opposite way of being religious, because they often involved Catholic mass features. On the side of short pray details, electric organ themes are leading the listener to a dark funeral mass that might end up in sacrilegious resurrection of the dead. The atmosphere of funerals are an important feature in their music, and they've mixed their feeling with doom metal in a genious way like nobody else before. All of these were made with such ease and simplicity like if pairing the two was the most evident thing on the world, and the question might stand in the listener: "Why nothing like this was made before? And even if something similar was made, why it wasn't so effective?" Occasionally stringed instruments are helping to wonder about the depths of passingness, and the ceremony master's high singing vocal style is often collapsing into mysterious whispering that foretells nothing nice about the afterlife, if there is any. The album is strongly recommended for the fans of the darkest doom metal and also in case of lonely cemetery walks.

The Art of Blasphemy - Penitence (2007)

   The Art of Blasphemy developed musically a lot all-round since the first album, and they've committed a quite effective return by "Penitence".
   "Use Your Idols!!!" was an audience friendlier album by it's musical simplicity that kept some distance from the Northern style, except the attention seeking features. In the followings they still preferred to stay on their own way as the wildness of Mediterranean bands showed up in their music. That was represented in the heavier sound to involve a second, deep growling backing vocal. In the themes the role of the traditional Northern black metal features increased (the returning guitar melodies strongly reminding to Mayhem), but their music also became more complex and diverse. On "Penitence" they played faster and speed changes are also common. By the intensity and the heavy sound they reached a sick animalistic feeling that's close to point through the borders of ordinary black metal. There are still some raw themes and musical solutions to find, but the band had a large progress that was able to open new perspectives.

Portal - Outre' (2007)

   Portal showed up as an experimental death metal band, that in their case basically means experimentations for a new alternative how to make death metal harder to go into. Basically for similar endeavors there's technical and progressive brutal death, that could pile up theme and tempo switches limitlessly, and of course progressive brutal death also might involve musical features of other styles, even non-metal style features.
   In general Portal's methods aren't too different, since even by first hearing their music sounds slightly mixed. But while most technical and progressive brutal death releases having crystal clear sound to highlight the plenty of details of the music, Portal embedded noisy, dirty and unfriendly Incantation influenced riffs and song structures into confusing disharmony. This disharmony they tried to unify or to convert to harmony by sizzling, atmospheric blackened sound and themes. Through this pretty simple, easily identifiable and often monotonously repeating instrument or effect noises offering guide for the listener. These are also having disharmonic effect, but the same time they meant to give an own identity for each song. In total, even if Portal's methods are similar to most technical brutal death bands, they're not flooding the listener with countless theme switches, but instead they prefer to switch between harmony and disharmony with kinda predictable frequency. Despite the various paradox solutions that their music include, it keeps staying unified, thanks to their noise preference and the strongly atmospheric blackened touch that's also responsible for their music's pretty obscure impression. This could make their albums long time enjoyable, and not only for the fans of technical brutal death.

Moondark - The Shadowpath (2007)

   Moondark's "The Shadowpath" demo originally came out in 1993. Since the demo was pretty much all-round stunning (even by sound quality, which wasn't usual at '90s demo tapes) it had a decent release by No Colours Records in 2007 (and later by Xtreem Music as well in 2015).
   Despite the nearly endless line of Swedish death metal bands, it proved to be pretty difficult to pass by "The Shadowpath". Moondark reached nearly death/doom-like depths by their down tuned, rumbling-noisy music. It wasn't a short demo by its 35 mins length, and the band did an excellent job by filling it with ominous, demoralizing themes. These themes combined with the common slow downs, the raw, noisy sound and deep growling vocal created an exceptionally dark impression, that's comparable to Eternal Darkness, another lesser known, but iconic Swedish death metal classic of the early '90s. It wasn't just another ordinary old school Swedish death metal material, but something way heavier. Even though the members of the original line-up showed up in various other (longer lasting and therefore probably better known) bands like Centinex, Interment, Demonical and October Tide, none of them were even close to the inhumanly dark essence that was introduced by "The Shadowpath". Strongly recommended for the fans of death/doom heaviness!