LP Review: "With A Cunning Fire and Adversarial Resolve" by Athame

With A Cunning Fire and Adversarial Resolve

In this day and age, there are literally thousands of albums coming out and it gets hard to choose what to look at for coverage or for purchase.

What struck me about this album was honestly the band's name.

An athame (uh-tha-may) is a ceremonial dagger used in witchcraft. In some sects, the owner of said knife is to name it and keep the blade's name a secret, lest someone else steal its power.

Do I need to go into a lengthy diatribe about witchcraft isn't necessarily evil or should it just be left as it is because metal often times is inherently evil?

Oh well, who cares. If anyone is reading this and getting offended by the topics contained by the bands, certainly they've buggered off by now right?

Athame

Upon first glance, this album had me slightly disappointed.

As the first track played, it felt like all Athame could muster was standard issue death metal, and frankly, there are a million bands who do that and it's a bit tired.

But I kept listening and Athame took me on an unexpected ride, kind of like when you think you're in line for the Log Flume, but you ended up on Tom's Twister instead.

They make full use of big crunchy riffs and chord progressions, but they get slightly dissonant. The right touch of dissonance can take a bland riff and turn it into something cable of making the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

They make full usage of tempo changes, but to an extreme degree. Listening to With A Cunning Fire and Adversarial Resolve is similar to riding the Knight Bus. It hurts a bit, it's uncomfortable, but the ride was well worth the fare.

Release: 7/8/16
Genre: Avant Garde Metal
Label: Grimoire Records
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