Vircolac are a band from Ireland that has been featured before in this zine and plays a blackened form of death metal and this is a review of their 2019 album "Masque" which will be released in March as a joint effort between Sepulchral Voice and Dark Descent Records.
Distorted amp noises start off the album before going into a very fast and brutal direction which also uses a great amount of blast beats. Vocals also bring in a great amount of blackened metal screams while the riffing is more rooted in the death metal style along with some dark sounding melodies.
Throughout the recording you can also hear a great mixture of slow, mid paced and fast parts along with all of the musical instruments having a very powerful sound to them. When guitar solos and leads are utilized they bring more of an old school and chaotic style of death metal to the recording.
Some of the tracks are long and epic in length while horror movie style synths can also be heard briefly. A couple of songs also introduces clean guitars onto the recording while the music also has its technical moments and the album also closes with an instrumental. The production sounds very professional while the lyrics cover the mass industrialized slaughter of much of Europe's in The Great War.
In my opinion this is another great sounding recording from Vircolac and if you are a fan of blackened death metal, you should check out this album. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Titan" "So I Hang From A Wretched Tree" and "The Long Trail". 8 out of 10.
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