Mhorgl

With their third album, Australia's Mhorgl continue to ignore surfing, sunny days and their homeland's many charms in favour of leather pants, spiked forearm covers and death metal majesty. On Heresiarch, they don't shy away from showing off their many talents. The album contains a mixture of orthodox death metal, à la early Gorgoroth, and some thrashier tracks. In both cases, Mhorgl perform at the necessary speeds to do their songwriting and genre influences justice. When it comes to soloing, Rob Thorpe (guitar) brings incredible talent and some interesting sonic innovations to every track. Heresiarch also features a number of classical guitar compositions, showing the band at their most romantic (think epic romanticism with a capital r). Heresiarch is an excellent black metal album that also features album art all bands should aspire to. If a host of demons destroying everything in sight doesn't scream "good black metal!!!," I don't know what does.