Faithful Darkness – Archgod

Faithful Darkness is a melodic death & thrash metal quintet from Helsingborg (Sweden). Archgod is band’s third full-length album, containing 13 tracks. They’ve been aorund for almost a decade now, so they are not a new band by any means! Meanwhile, this opus sees the band stronger and more mature than ever before – where they mainly offer a highly melodic variant of thrash metal mixed with Gothenburg-styled melodic death metal.

Their sound is characterised by a clean and harsher vocal combination and keyboard layering and being very modern in its approach. I enjoyed their highly competent rhythm section, a lot of dynamics and varied pace. If that wasn’t enough those guys ocassionaly add some nice soloing, some catchy samples and ditto choruses, some piano here and there, and who knows what else?! It all helps keeping things interesting and listenable.

Most of the songs change from aggressive and pummeling to soft and snuggly – sometimes within the same song?! Apart from that, one feels like the songs are a continuum from one to another, despite of the fact that we are not dealing here with a concept album as such.

It’s been awhile since I last time got excited about a band blending thrash/death metal, as I felt there was a stagnation and repetition on the scene. Faitful Darkness made me change my mind and now again I’m hooked to this superb Swedish style melo death & thrash metal.

Archgod is a wonderfully modern melodic death metal album that can esp. be recommended for fans of Soilwork, In Flames, Opeth, At The Gates, Dark Tranquillity, System Of A Down, Dimmu Borgir, Amon Amarth etc.

Contact info www.facebook.com/FaithfulDarknessOfficial or www.faithfuldarkness.com