Moriah - Where, Death, Is Your Victory?

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Now this is a pretty interesting band.  Moriah hails from Brazil and as far as I know, this is their debut album Where, Death, Is Your Victory.  First off, the production on this disc could be much improved.  However, when you get over the production you'll find a pretty decent band that plays a mixture of death, doom, thrash, and black metal with a heavy reliance on keyboards.  Moriah takes influences from zillions of bands and somehow melds it into something listenable. 

After the intro comes the title track.   I couldn't help but think of Ashen Mortality, especially with their use of haunting keyboards.  The third song "Blood Fall" brings in more influences like Morphia and Seventh Angel.  The fourth song "His Death Was Brutal" sounds similar to a mix between In the Bleak Midwinter-era Sanctifica, Demoniciduth, and Break the Curse-era Mortification.  And too top things off, they stray away from the haunting keyboards for a funky, '80's sounding keyboard solo.  They then go back to this fast and heavy riffing over some Saviour Machine-like keyboards.  Song number five, "Welcome to the True Service" starts off like it's gonna be a doom metal song with some slow, and plodding bass guitar ala Paramecium or Morgion, before quickly speeding up.  They use some cool choir/chant/background vocals on this song.  The band rounds out the album with the song "Our Praise to the Almighty God" which is a extreme metal praise song that sounds pretty good.

It doesn't sound like Moriah copied any of the above bands.  I don't that was their intention.  However, it's obvious who they borrow their influences from.  Thankfully, most of those influences I like. 

This is not a band that will blow your mind, but they surprised me in that after I finished listening, I was like....hey, that was pretty cool!  You can easily pick this release up at Blastbeats or Metal Mission.  (Review by Matt)

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