With comprehensible vocals, coherent mid-level growling, and heavy but punk inspired riffing, Graves With No Crosses offer a generous mix of Old-School Death Metal and 90’s Swedish Death Metal that is certain to please fans of both sub-genres.
Artist: Aghor
Album: Graves with No Crosses
Released: July 15th, 2018
Label: Indepenent
Location: Estonia
In the immortal words of one of my favourite music related Youtubers, Goniloc: “Estonia is what I imagine Hell is modeled after”, and while I can’t confirm from personal experience, if the extreme metal scene there is anything to go by, there has to be at least a grain of truth to that statement. In the spirit of that, we have death metallers Aghor and their most recent EP Graves with No Crosses.
Though the band describes themselves as Old-School Death Metal, while listening to this EP, I found myself drawing more comparisons to the Swedish Death Metal scene more than anything else, which is in no way a bad thing. The vocals are comprehensible, with coherent mid-level growling, and the instrumentals are heavy, but have the punkier melodic riffing that made the likes of Dismember popular in the days of yester-year. Graves with No Crosses is also interesting in that the EP acts as the debut of half of the band members, with bassist Jan Talts and vocalists Erki Hirv, joining founding members R and G to complete the Estonian outfit. Luckily, the band seems to have clicked right away, producing this well-done record.
While the EP is only 4 songs and under 15 minutes in duration, each song hits hard with coordinated and methodic riffing. It’s a shame that the band has yet to release any follow up material and have been quiet on their social media pages for a few years now. Hopefully, the silence will be broken in the near future, and Aghor will return with more excellent death metal!
Purchase the album: https://aghor.bandcamp.com/album/graves-with-no-crosses
Follow the band: https://www.facebook.com/AghorDeathMetal/
