Kickstarting 2012’s major Middle Eastern metal efforts, Perversion‘s newest work hits the market with high expectations haunting it. Solid and imbued with technical instrumental efforts (the most prominent instrument being the guitar which showcases great riffs), Pillars Of The Enlightened lives up to its expectations and delivers to put a name for Perversion alongside the big names of metal in the Emirates.
The album, with its cool introduction and good ol’ death metal riffs throughout, showcases the high potential of the band to stand at the end of the road for death metal greatness. Providing content that is not commonly found in Middle Eastern bands, as well as Lovecraftian-esque lyrics to accompany the songs, the band has made sure that this album rises to the standard of a headbangable death metal treat. Perhaps raising the bar for Middle Eastern content as well as containing some memorable parts was the high point for this album, but as for the low points, there are also a good deal of them.
The main low point lies in that the album’s song structure is messy. The songs all contain very good parts and one song could’ve been better if it repeated a few parts just a little bit more and had the stable song structure of verses, bridges and actually memorable choruses. This gives the album the negative point that it needs a few spins before you can remember anything, while an actually professional album would get your attention to a high degree from the first time. Other low points lie in the lack of progression for the songs throughout the album, in that you do not see a lot of change from start to finish, as well as the fact that the vocalist plays it safe and fills the album with monotonous growls.
All in all, Pillars Of The Enlightened serves as a worked-on album with an unlikely professionality seen in the Middle East, akin to bands such as Myrath and Nervecell. Things look brighter for the future and an evolution of Pillars could possibly hit a landmark in Middle Eastern metal history, but as for now, this is just a decent treat for a headbanger to sway to and nothing groundbreaking.
Highlights: “Subconscious Mutation”, “Gates Of The Multiverse”, “The Origins Of Horror”
* Review has been cross posted on our partner’s Jozine website here
[…] taken from the band’s debut album “Pillars of the Enlightened” (Reviewed here). The video was shot in Egypt back in 2011, when the band performed in Cairo as part of the […]