Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

When we step out of the shade we can either be blinded by the possibility of the unexpected, overpowering sunlight, or we can mentally prepare ourselves and place a hand up in readiness for the inevitable, for the strength of the commanding and authoritative entity that offers us life, warmth, and the belief in the potency of the universe.

It is in Shadecrown’s fourth album release, the definitive 0 is invoked,a sense of the dramatic and the influential colliding, merging, and offering a true reveal of the formidable; and as the prospect of a seismic avalanche of doom and death metal adds a melodic spice to the proceedings, so Finland’s continual dominance of the genre plays on.

0 is moody, it is mean and prevailing, but it is also harmonic, it holds a principal of discovery for the uninitiated, and greets the faithful like a demonic friend, an old and gracious demon willing to shake hands and pass time in your company as each vocal blow against the heart is understood, translated by the soul, and then revelled in.

For Jari Hokka, Joonas Vesamäki, Tomi Tikka, Saku Tammelin, Janne Salmelin, and Kalle Varonen, the sound produced is full of fever, it lodges in the mind as crucial information passed down from a trusted source, and one that could bring down a realm if fallen into the wrong hands, and at its centre is the haunting call of a group reaching a new and governing level of discipline and ferocity.

Across tracks such as In A State Of Agony, Fragile Chapters, Under The Waves, the excellent Tear-Blind, and the finale of Repentance, Shadecrown beat without mercy the languid and turgid alike with a dream of recording that is relentless and filled with elegant, rampant vigorous choral like sympathy.

A truly magnificent album, a sound that is complete, 0 refuses to cow down to the flesh wounds of life delivered by those who lack conviction, and instead rages even harder, and with righteous focus.

Ian D. Hall