### Advent Of Bedlam: Behold the chaos

#### 17/11/10 || Love Lagerkvist

Welcome to the review of Costa Rica’s finest export apart from cheap coffee and bad gambling tricks – metallers Advent Of Bedlam and their debut album “Behold the chaos”. Or, maybe “debut” is the wrong word. You see, the band used to go under the name of December’s Cold Winter, but in a rare moment of revelation they realized how retarded such name in sounds when you come from a country where 20 degrees is considered cold. Not that Advent Of Bedlam makes any more sense, but at least it’s a bit more honest (there was something about how the band sound shifted from keyboard-laden blackened death metal to more straight forward modern sound in there too, but that’s more of a footnote).

Behold the chaos starts of with superb intro “Ifrit Awakens”, a 43 seconds long buildup to an awesome Ulcerate song that the band never actually made. If only the rest of the tracks could be like this, it would warrant at least a 9. Sadly, this is not the case. The next track, “Enlightenment of the Forsaken”, pretty much sets the blueprint of the rest of the disc. We have some tremolo riffs ranging from “meh” to “I can dig this”, kind of low range growls and pretty high shrieks for vocals, pummeling double bass drumming, great soloing, a surprisingly audioable bass and a clear but kind of unpersonal production that goes on way to long.

And this it really how the whole thing goes on for 53 long minutes. Track number three, “The Stench Of Your Faith”, has a lot more melodic parts and even remedies the length problem of it’s predecessor (it’s more fitting 4 minutes instead of 7). “Awaiting for Chaos” goes all out on the shrieks and includes an horrible sample part where you can’t hear jack shit as well as an awesome solo, while “The Darkest Alliance” includes a pretty fucken awesome gang vocals part where over 100 fans apparently contributed. Sure, the formula is a bit repetitive. But you know what, it’s enjoyable, and for about half of the album it really tingles my cock.

Then, it gets a bit boring. By track 8, I just want it to end. Granted, the last three minutes of finisher “The Alabaster Corpse Consequences” does kind of make up for it by a really rocking kind of bit, but the damage is already done and the “eject” button is already pressed.

Recommendation: Get the album, only listen to tracks 1-7 and use an audio-trimmer to remove some of the fat. Couple that with a cheap latte of your choice and go to a bad online casino. You’ve now experience the best Costa Rica has to offer without even going to the fucken place. You can thank me later.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Envenomed Records
- Website: “www.adventofbedlam.com”:http://www.adventofbedlam.com/
- Band
- Roy Zumbado: vocals
- Max Gutierrez: guitars
- Isak Aroyo: guitar
- Fabian Salas: bass
- Alex Ovares: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Ifrit Awakens
- 02. Enlightenment of the Forsaken
- 03. The Stench Of Your Faith
- 04. Awaiting for Chaos
- 05. Chronicles of a Bedlamite
- 06. The Darkest Alliance
- 07. Harp Of Ruin
- 08. Dogmatic Apprehensions
- 09. Vessels of Sin
- 10. The Alabaster Corpse Consequences