### Empyreal Destroyer: 2006

#### 23/10/06 || Lord K Philipson

It’s a good thing that this English band is alot better than what their moniker implies. Can’t really say that the cover enhanced the overall impression one got when opening the letter it came in either. It’s not like I’m shitting flowers out of joy here while listening to this, but I sure get alot worse crap handed to me on a regular basis. Hello Ocular Faith.

Empyrial Destroyer isn’t anything what you would expect really, coz they have pretty much gotten everything backwards. Just look at the names of the members. That’s black metal names right there. And they suck as such as well. But there’s not much black metal to be found here. Not even the very black metallish logo helps in this case. According to themselves they “aim to create an audio depiction of venture, ascension, retribution (and Dragonball Z) using musical artillery from the most imperial of death metal, power metal, hair metal and black metal”.

Wow. Just wow, I guess.

There’s not much of any kind of brutality to be found here, I guess that’s hard to accomplish if you draw inspiration from hair metal and power metal… What they do have is a fair amount of melody and screamy vocals. Some of the riffs are quite catchy and at times it seems like they know what they are doing playingwise. The “drummer” is another story. If that’s not a drummachine my name is Suzy Quatro. I have heard worse programmings, but also a hella lot better ones.

If you look beyond the apparent flaws you end up with some semi black metal riffs, a bunch of thrashier riffs, some power metal and a good dose of melody and half-cheese. They pretty much nailed it themselves in their description in the biography, that’s a plus for them. But what it comes down to is this: Empyreal Destroyer isn’t as bad as expected but they are nothing but ok, at best.

Recommended tune: “Cyclonic beast”.

- Information
- Released: 2006
- Website: www.empyrealdestroyer.co.uk
- Band
- Devastator: drums
- Niyil-ka: vocals
- Wraith: bass
- The Shadow Venger: guitars

- Tracklist
- 01. Chaos torrent
- 02. Cyclonic beast
- 03. Inverted circle
- 04. All shall I conquer