Open the Hearts

Architect of Disease is a five member band from Poland, which was formed in 2011. In fact, though, the band exists for some years in Black Metal, as its story begins in 2009 with Iugulatus. So when the singer of Iugulatus decided to leave the band, the rest of the members wanted to start over with a new name, with fresh ideas and somehow different sound from that they had presented to us in the past. That’s how Architect of Disease was born. In 2012 they recorded their first album “Open the Hearts” which was released in August of 2013. This album contains seven tracks of overall duration of forty five minutes. The music of AOD mixes dark Black Metal with solid, melodic Death and all this under a heavy, depressing atmosphere.

The listener will come across melodic riffs, mostly of mid and slow speed, that they remind of Death Metal riffing a lot, solid and rhythmic. However, the compositions don’t lack of fast, Black Metal parts that, although they are few, they show us the European influences of the band. The atmosphere of all the tracks is heavy and suffocating, its purpose is to penetrate the listener’s defenses and influence his psychological state. The tracks are quite technical, with a lot of changes both concerning the riffs and the rhythm, making their structure somehow complex and in some parts tedious. The beautiful, melodic, guitar solos come to help the tracks and to renew the interest of the listener.

Every instrument has perfect performance. The guitars are those which are distinguished by the rest of the instruments as they deliver many different emotions, atmospheres and images, different genres of Metal in a very artistic way. The bass is audible, while its lines are not anything special but they fill the sound well. The drums are technical, with beautiful, interesting lines, other times fast other times slow, they add power, depth and certainty to the compositions. The vocals are quite different from what we would expect. They bring to your mind a mixture of Death Metal vocals with heavy, Black Metal growls, a weird but interesting approach. The production is clean, bass and solid while the mixture is very balanced presenting the sound of every instrument clearly and at the same time it makes the compositions very massive. The lyrics are written in English and they approach philosophical and religious wonderings in a very poetic way.

AOD with their first full length effort, they show their experience, their technic and the talent that distinguishes them. The sound is perfect, the performance of the instruments is very good and if we don’t consider some quite tedious riffs, “Open the Hearts” is a quite good effort. Surely it won’t be appreciated by every Black Metal fan because of its special character. To those who like the technical and more experimental sound, it worth to listen to this album.