Azziard
Vesanie 

Mortis Humanae Productions 2014

French blackened death metallers Azziard strike hard on their second album with an exercise in ruthlessness and precision.  After a synth laden opening passage on Allegorie it dives straight into blackened riffs.  The drums sound huge, and a bit over produced but that is a matter of preference for me.  The guitars are loud and have a nice crunch to them as they roll into churning death metal blasts with gusts of black metal meshed together.  Razor sharp execution of blackened death riffs disembowel you from the opening notes of Disjonction.  Massive grooves and walls of double bass absolutely crush you as the song continues.  Lingering riffs and drifting notes paint across the song's middle before uniting with heavy grooves once again.  The final minute is a swaying black metal riff with deathly chunks tossed in.  Cold, melodic initial sounds create a forlorn mood as Ekphrasis gets underway.  The sawing rhythm that sets the stage for the track is wiped cleaning by speedy death metal surges.  The song is a circular cycle as it collapse back towards if melancholic beginnings.  Then you are leveled by a torrent of blasting black metal.  The final track starts with a very confident and dominating riff that gallops away like a raging beast.  Intense but controlled fretwork is coupled with tasty drum strikes.  Black metal riffs swoop in with forceful determination and hatred only to surrender to midtempo grooves and spoken vocal samples.  The normal vocals themselves are actually caught between guttural death and ghoulish black metal styles.  The production is perhaps a bit too clean and "big" for me.  I would like to see it a bit dirtier and more organic in sound.  Vesanie is a lethal dose of well written and executed black death metal.  Azziard stands strong with one foot planted firmly in death metal and the other in black metal.  A savage union indeed.