One aspect of metal I have really enjoyed, and one that’s none too common in the death/grind camp, is keyboards.  The ones used here are phenomenal, and add an excellent back element to the music; that probably helps to explain why I have enjoyed Dimmu Borgir so much.   When employed as they are here, their interplay between the guitars and drums is something to behold, and the album as a whole would have been much weaker without them.  Vocalist Johnny Lehto, who also handles the guitar work, has a solid black metal rasp, but thankfully one that’s none too grating.  The other half of the guitars is handled by Christer Bergqvist, and there’s a good amount of icy solos on display to please fans of the genre.  The album is not dominated by them, as the enjoyment here is the overall blending of the various elements as opposed to a shred fest.

The title track starts out in a manner that I’ve always been a sucker for: a solid guitar groove and sixteenth-notes pounding the kick drums.  It’s one of the best tracks on the album.  The music does get a little overly-blasty at times (“Stormlegion”), which can add a sense of sameness, but overall this album really hits on all cylinders.  The production is fantastic, so fans of back alley production black metal might want to look elsewhere.  The album clocks in at just over 40 minutes with most tracks around the 4 minute mark, which allows for the songs to evolve with overstaying their welcome.  As winter descends on much of the country, this is a fitting soundtrack for this time of year.

To give you an idea of how good this album is, I really didn’t care for Grief Of Emerald ‘s other albums, but Christian Termination has been on constant play since I got it. It does have its moments of Borgir-like synthetic atmosphere bridled with some trademark blasting. Personally though, I think the album blows away Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia (a good album in its own right, though), which is mainly, due to the fact it is much more death metal. The rotten, slimy current of Morbid Angel is ripe within most of the twisting and blasting, and it quickly washes away most of any Borgir-like qualities. Grief Of Emerald have taken Dimmu Borgir’s “Misanthropic” to influence and given it a more demonic noise, with much more emphasis on unpredictable riffs and stop-start time changes that at times remind me of a less involved Emperor. Standout tracks “The Almighty is Rising,” “Consumed by Fire” and “The Cause” are definitely in the vein of Prometheus: The Discipline… with their irregular, serpentine riffs. It’s not an exact comparison (Grief Of Emerald to Emperor), but at times, the songwriting’s marked improvement results in some very Emperor-like moments. Back to death metal. The band have seemed to make a concerted effort to be a little more intense in their keyboard lashing by incorporating lurching and Gates of Annihilation-style grinding into the otherwise synth-laden blasting. Sometimes the songs intertwine both elements and create some excellent moments. “Deformed Imaginations” is a classic Morbid Angel death metal slug that crawls along with precision and menace.

Of course, Christian Termination does at times tend to fall back on the typical symphonic blasting of previous efforts. The album opens with decent but furiously unoriginal “Alas, Spiriti Sancti.” It’s done incredibly well and still is aggressive in its delivery, but it’s only a minor bright spot in the band’s older repertoire. Even some of the hyper-riffage is more akin the backward riffage of Trey Azagoth, some of the riffs on display are simply mesmerizing in their complexity and satisfying predictability. Album closer “Humanity’s Fall” is prime example of how the band can turn off the influence valve. By having the keyboards slightly muted and allowing the killer axe work of Johnny and Jimmy carry the song, the result is a heavy-as-fuck song perfect for ending the album. The synth heavy,”Scum of the Earth,” with its spooky breakdown and spoken words, is musical plagiarism but that’s always the highest form of flattery. The guitars are downtuned and crushing, which carries most of the music, allowing Grief Of Emerald more time to bare teeth than Dimmu Borgir.

There will be those that slam Grief Of Emerald for being unoriginal, but fuck ’em. Christian Termination is simply a fantastic album of extreme metal that deserves your unequivocal attention by shutting off your genre bigotry and realizing originality can be overrated when a band decides to focus on producing well played, vehement music. Regardless of who it sounds like.