Album Review : Adversarial - Prophetic Plain of Abyssal Revelation

When the world was crying about how modern sound was taking over and the 'old school' was lost, something happened. Many bands started an "Old-School" revival. A number that cannot be counted on fingers and might probably outnumber the pioneering bands. Everything, from Death, Thrash, Black was being revisited and worshiped by newer bands and that style being revived.

Though that caused the eruption of a large number of clone bands that are easily forgotten and ignored, bands like Adversarial chose their own sound while worshiping Old-school warriors at the same time.

Taking their sounds from likes of Incantation and Immolation, and even the likes of Archgoat and Black Witchery, Adversarial's style of Black/Death is very unlike the many worthless Blasphemy worship bands around and even surpass them in terms of brutality.

After a consistent, but badly mixed full-length in 2010, All Idols Fall Before The Hammer, Adversarial came out with an EP titled Prophetic Plain of Abyssal Revelation this year, consisting of 3 songs from their demo, 2 new songs and 2 covers. The songs from the demo are the same in terms of production, mixing and mastering. The snare drums might still hurt and the guitars are fairly drowned in the background, but the drumming and vocals have enough variety to keep you hooked on and intent on listening to everything that is going on, and the record keeps getting interesting with each listen as you discover something new about the riffs and bass every time.

The two new songs are titled Prophetic Plain of Abyssal Revelation and Impending Eternal Blackness and take everything good and bad about the full-length, while doubling the intensity. The recording and mixing is still the same for the former track. The snare pounds away like a jackhammer while other elements of the songs manifest themselves when the drums are not in an "Infernal fucking Hyperblast" mode, and one can hear the super-fast Blackened Death Metal riffing hidden underneath the layers of brutality. The track "Impending Eternal Darkness", in comparison has a better sound quality, and you can actually hear everything else playing and the evil sound borrowed from likes of Incantation are audible near the end of the track. The vocals are similar to Archgoat and Incantation with low, rumbling grunts in the former track, while "Impending Eternal Darkness" has vocals similar to Teitanblood and Necros Christos. The band implements doomier sections in their music for the purpose of creating an atmosphere, and does it well, avoiding over-use.

The EP ends with a cover of Archgoat's Light Devouring Darkness and Incantation's Once Holy Throne. Both covers are well done, and there's nothing more to say about it except the fact that Adversarial did justice to the covers of their masters.

Overall, a good EP that suffers from the snare flaw like the Full-length, but the positive side to that element

being that it adds an air of mysteriousness to the release and will bring a listener back for more.   
All Idols Fall Before The Hammer Check it out.!