Old Chapel are a death metal band from Russia. This is their second album.
Old Chapel play old-school death metal with a healthy doom influence.
The songs on Visions from Beyond are simple, heavy affairs, sticking to the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it style of death metal. The album is riff-hungry, fuelled by guitars and thick, meaty riffs that are never enough to satisfy its craving for that classic death metal sound.
With an old-school style that’s somewhere between that of Obituary, Asphyx and Entombed, when Old Chapel wheel out their death metal wares and it would be churlish not to indulge.
The simplicity of the songs works in their favour, and the tracks on this release are memorable and enjoyable. With the slight exception of the last track, (an instrumental with some 70s progressive rock overtones), there are no surprises on the album, but I have no issue with that at all. Visions from Beyond is a quality release of old-school death metal, along with everything that entails.
I particularly enjoy the singer’s voice. He has a very gratifyingly deep growl that’s rough and harsh in all of the right ways for this kind of thing. His performance is spot on.
The production is strong and muscular. It’s not overly polished, but it nonetheless gives the band a professional sound, lending the music extra power to what it might have otherwise had if they had suffered from a sub-standard recording.
In all honesty Visions from Beyond is just a very satisfying collection of death metal songs. If you’re into the old-school sound then you know exactly what you’re getting here and Old Chapel are obviously adept at delivering the goods in exactly the way that you would want them to.
Recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 