Belial - Gods of the Pit Pt II (Paragon So Below)
Review: These four songs are simple but effective in that they seek to communicate an elemental hatred and darkness, a destruction and vengeful wrath upon the world. Brutality comes from the repetitive but effectively heavy rhythms but is directed in a large part by the croaking ultra-bass guttural amplified abuse of the vocal track, menacing in its clenched obscurity.
Riffs are composed from very simple scalar elements of power chords and played with recurrent rising rhythms terminated in some definitive stroke of chord or snare. Double bass continues underneath the rolling riffs, locking the band into patterns from which it produces a consistent sound through permutations, sounding very much like a death metal band if it weren't for the looseness of strumming rhythms and the simplistic architecture. But it almost reminds me of Cathedral how these songs seem to ride a groove and then drop it and then begin again, or of one of the doomier grindcore bands that use similarly finite terminations on their phrases.
1. The Invocation
2. Voices Beyond 
3. Deceased
4. For Them
5. Piece by Piece (Remix)
Nothing will stand out, especially not musicianship or the few subtle variations, but this stands as a band in the Hellhammer-esque style of black metal that made a new rhythmic experience out of the juncture between that band and Sodom, who played with similar styles of internal rhythm to riffs with equal simplicity. Brief melodies are woven into some moments of the music and these are beautiful and rare, making the whole seem almost planned. Overall unexciting unexceptional but often sort of cool as the simple hypnotic destruction it is.