END REIGN – The Way of All Flesh Is Decay

This utterly fierce and cleverly written debut offering by End Reign not only boasts excellent musicianship but also a compellingly dark atmosphere that is unlike anything else that I have come across. Featuring members of Scour, Fulgora, Pig Destroyer, Exhumed, and Misery Index, and citing influences from thrash metal, hardcore, and death metal among other things, these gentlemen have spawned ten rather impressive compositions that serve up a seemingly never-ending number of glorious twists, surprises, and effective hooks capable of blowing your mind and enthralling you.

Sounding aggressive and vicious is one thing, but to create something that is slightly chaotic and unhinged yet sharp and focused and with such a prominent aura of claustrophobic unease to it takes skill. Although its highlights in the shape of ‘Chaos Masked as Order’, ‘The Hunger’, and ‘Divine Abysmal End’ rear their heads early on, intensity does not desert the latter half of the LP, and a huge amount of brooding menace courses through the whole affair. Just as the superb vocals are dripping with venom and exude genuine spite, so does the music, and if you listen closely, you will discover riffs and ideas that would not be entirely out of place on Hell Awaits by Slayer, Under the Sign of the Black Mark by Bathory, and Terryfier by Pig Destroyer. And do not even get me started on how wicked the raw, memorable, and thrash metal-esque guitar solos are.

You cannot classify this stunning opus easily, and it is all the better for it. The Way of All Flesh Is Decay is a stately piece of work and a staggeringly sinister thing to immerse oneself in, and the tracks entitled ‘House of Thieves’ and ‘Giving Life to Tragedy’ are simply addictive. You have been warned.