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Summing up as a fifth release, "Welcome Farewell" is definitely a fine piece of work from Norwegian black metallers VREID.

From the very start, I can say the album is darker and even more aggressive than their 2011 release "V" (also a brilliant album). The manner in which the album is written leaves no room for interpretation though, everything is done with precision and care, restless construction of riffs, menacing blasts and powerful bass tones.

It is a bit hard to avoid talking about "V" in order to relate impressions for "Welcome Farewell", there are elements the band are accentuating and trying to bring up front, like the "thrashiness" of the riffs and a more...

I am an unashamed fan of Technical Death Metal- I find the challenge of absorbing the 'all-points-attack' of a band like Spawn of Possession or the blistering '1000-Uzis' approach of Brain Drill a total joy.The ice-cold chaos of Ulcerate brings me much happiness but occasionally one wants to reset the system, cleanse the palette of Death and this E.P. fits the bill perfectly.

Rex Shachath bring the sledgehammers, the spiked clubs and the cudgels on their debut E.P., quite content to leave technical wizardry and dizzying time-changes out in the modern day cold and drench us in the warm viscera of classic Old School Death Metal, the kind that we all grew up on, breaking our milk teeth on the likes of Death, Obituary, Entombed, Cannibal Corpse to sit proudly alongside Vomitory, Severe Torture...

There’s a long-running commercial on this side of the pond that derides the common misconceptions of California. A parade of surfers, boy bands and vapid celebrities bemoaning the typical stereotypes.

Yet, so far from the frozen fjords of Scandinavia, there’s a cold heart beating under the sweltering sun; dark hordes sprouting like weeds across the Golden State. Twenty-one years after Von poisoned the Pacific coastline and helped kick-start the USBM movement, the Californian black metal scene is among the nation’s most venomous and vibrant, with LA’s Lightning Swords of Death fast becoming firm fixtures on its dark mantel.

Taking a page from their bay-area brethren and binding it to the obsidian texts of black metal, the band have accumulated a decade of...