For those of you who haven't heard of AOAA, they're a 5 piece death metal band (earlier works could be considered more deathcore than anything else) from Lowestoft, England which formed in 2006. They consist of Steve "Sewer Mouth" Regan (Vocals), Jamie "Chinstrap" Sweeney (Guitar), Sam Dawkins (Guitar), Nath Applegate (Bass), and Brad Merry (Drums). They are currently signed to Nuclear Blast and Siege of Amida, previous works were signed to This City is Burning Records (2007's Welcome to Sludge City EP, currently out of print), and Ferret Records (2008's Before the Throne of Infection, their first full-length album). And now onto the review.
II: The Reign of Darkness contains 11 tracks. The album starts off with the intro track "And So It Begins...", which starts off with what appears to be a beating heart and other ambient noises. As the track progresses, it gets, what can best be described as metal being sharpened, while a recording of a broadcast message plays and an air raid siren goes off. This begins to set the mood of the album as sort of a post-apocalyptic take over (thus the album title "The Reign of Darkness"). The track then goes silent for a split second before the broadcasted message states "We're Doomed!" and then kicks off into the cd with a quick 2 second blast of drums starting off the track "In Snakes I Bathe", which leads to "Born Dead", "Bone Crown" (Featuring guest vocalist Erik Rutan, most famous for his work with Morbid Angel), "Emptiness", "Catastrophic Hybridization", "VII: The Horror, The Destruction...", "Impale the Sun", "Portrait of Souls", "Cryogenica", and ends with "Into the Black Slumber". Throughout the album, the tracks vary from subject to subject, as AOAA's lyrical styles mostly deal with subjects such as Gore, Death, and Sodomy, but it all holds together throughly. Certain tracks stick out as almost anthems, mainly "Bone Crown" as it starts and ends with Steve Regan chanting "I Am Hell" with the feeling that there is a large mob chanting with him. The album also contains what is rarely seen in death metal, that being the instrumental track, in this case it being "VII: The Horror, The Destruction..." which feels as though it's been influenced by Mastodon (mainly the song "Battle at Sea" from their EP "Lifesblood"), and it really holds up with the rest of the album. There was only one thing I didn't like about the album and that was the track "Into the Black Slumber". The track starts off sounding like there's a rain storm taking place. Normally I would start to think of Raining Blood and automatically go "SLAYER!!!!!" but alas, it was not so. After the raining, the track gets a sort of groove going, with the effect of thunder in the background. There's some pretty fast and technical drumming throughout the track, which I love in a song, the downside of the song for myself is in the ending. The track itself is 8:26 in length, yet the song itself starts at 20 seconds and ends at 6:24, you might be wondering at this point "what about the other 2:30?", like I said before, all omnious rain effects, it just seems drawn out.
Overall though, a solid performance throughout, would definitely reccommend it. If you're a fan of bands such as Whitechapel, Between the Buried and Me (Steve Regan's growls sound like a combination of Phil Bozeman and Tommy Giles Rogers), Job for a Cowboy, Suicide Silence, and even Cannibal Corpse, you might want to check Annotations of an Autopsy out. If you're looking for a copy of the album, it was released on January 18th, 2010 in the UK and was released worldwide on February 9, 2010, you can purchase the album on amazon (link at the end) or check out itunes as they're on there as well.
Overall rating: 4.2 out of 5
Buy the Album Here
Annotation of an Autopsy's Website
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