Year of release: 2018
Label: Wolfspell Records
Rating: 7,8 / 10
Finally, Wolfspell has sent a promo of a good, non-gay, non-post, non-snotty, but all-metal atmospheric release. ODIOUS DEVOTION is a very young Finnish formation (apparently, a solo project) which composed almost an hour of music for its debut full-length. Surprisingly, only one track crosses the ten-minute mark. The rest hang around in less than seven minutes, which is quite succinct for this style.
At first it seems that the project reveals all its trump cards at once: after the introduction, the biggest song begins, 80% consisting of the traditional blast beat on which the hypnotic lead riff is laid. As a rule, the majority of groups thinking that this is enough, therefore their albums sound like boring bullshit. Creating an entire song based on a single guitar line is a risky task that only natural talents like DRUDKH can handle (and even they stopped doing this long time ago). Fortunately, ODIOUS DEVOTION adequately assesses its abilities, therefore it made an additional guitar line on top of the main line. This line makes the day, illing the composition with alarming epicity. At the end of the track, the musician suddenly gives us two minutes of DARKTHRONE - after all, this is Finland, so it's simply impossible to record an album without a nod.
The third track has a more cosmic atmosphere, and is also equipped with evil tremolo. The riffs have a slightly unusual structure - it seems that if you make the sound twice as raw and replace the drum pattern with a slower one, you get a cover of something from BlazeBirth Hall. The fourth song has a traditional melody, and the trick with the second guitar line works again. If I do not confuse anything, it is very similar to EARTH & PILLARS, which, as you must understand, is a compliment. By the end of the song, it becomes clear why the length of the tracks on the album is relatively short: the music of ODIOUS DEVOTION is not so exciting to enjoy repeating the same riff 20 minutes in a row, but 6-7 minutes is the perfect timing for it. Very far-sighted decision.
The fifth track on the album is a wonderful and simple ambient in the vein of "Tomhet". There is nothing to say - it's great. The sixth thing offers even more variety: starting as a slow one, it gradually turns into a middle tempo thing with a classical rhythm a la BURZUM and well-designed guitar “squares”, and then explodes with high-speed blast beats and tremolos. In truth, these quick chunks turned out to be significantly worse than the rest, but the song is still excellent.
The seventh track, in theory, was supposed to be an epic finale, but it didn't happened. This is the typical case when an atmospheric project is trying to make an evil face, and the result of his attempts is a bunch of ugly tremolos. The best part of the song is this final burzumish piece, the rest is useless. The final ambient composition draws a line under the album, which, although far from perfect, can serve as a textbook both for new adepts of atmospheric metal and for those experienced, who are still trying to squeeze out at least something decent.
English (UK) 
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