Album Review: Kyzer Soze - 'Ascension'

Hailing from the sunny northern confines of Brisbane, relatively new death metal outfit Kyzer Soze are ready to properly introduce themselves. With experience gained on the live circuit and in the rehearsal room now honed, the boys present their debut album, ‘Ascension.’

Haunting guitars, lasting atmosphere and sustained brutality are the areas of focus here. It's death metal, so the energy and intensity is always at the fore. Beginning with a beautiful, almost two minute long, introduction track, the blueprint is set early.

‘God Of War’ wastes no time throwing the listener into a heavy attack of fast drums beats and driving riffs to complement. The vocals are dark and angry but they offer a variance in tone, showing off everything from deep growling to a higher pitched scream. The contrasting vocals are a nice touch to provide a slight break from the ferocity of everything else.

While every second is heavy in some way, the album still offers some changing tempos and solid guitar work to keep things interesting. With ‘Descendants of Cain’ we hear a guitar solo that brings further life to the record along with a momentary pause that actually fits the structure of the song so well.

Comparatively, tracks like follower ‘End', which is a minute and a half of pure brutal death metal, offers a good representation of what you can expect from the more ferocious and heavy end of 'Ascension'.

Sure, the full-length has its standard death metal formula but with the vocal variation, considered presentation and subtle tempo changes the band manages to deliver substance. For a debut album, Kyzer Soze have managed to hone their sound pretty well. The collection of tracks are largely enjoyable and bound to get your head banging and blood pumping.

'Ascension' starts off like you think it's going to be a constant bombardment of intense and fast death metal, but these local heavy-hitters manage to include some slower moments that still don't lose that dark, death metal atmosphere. Kyzer Soze have managed to produce an engaging and worthy album for their debut.

Praecursio

God Of War

Descendants Of Cain

End

Aedes Satan

Soulless

Slaves To A Dead God

Lament S.M

Sacred Sermon

Brethren