Christian black metal: in my opinion that’s possibly the biggest contradiction in the music scene. Nevertheless, let’s look beyond that and find out what the Puerto Rican band Azmaveth has to offer with their second and new album Strong as Death.

Take one spoon of death metal, take two spoons of black metal, a tea spoon of thrash, maybe a sniff of gothic, take lack of structure and above all complete chaos, put it in a blender and what do you get? Yes, you are correct: Azmaveth.

Although they try so hard, it sounds like one big mess. I definitely do hear some potential, but Azmaveth seems to be way off balance. They want to combine too many things with each other, which results in them making me feel very nervous. There’s just too much going on with the electric guitar riffs, the acoustic guitar sound, the overwhelming drums and the vocals which go from grunting to screaming within seconds.

The detail that makes the above described feeling even worse are the acoustic interludes in between the songs. It’s a nice touch that Azmaveth wants to include some of their Hispanic origin like that on Strong as Death, but add it up to what I mentioned earlier and you will logically conclude the clutter of music gets even bigger. Sorry guys, but all these remarks including the whole praising Christ thing just don’t work for me.