And you have to respect the fact that they are leaning into the Game of Thrones thing on their new EP. 6 years after the show has ended, that’s really striking while the iron is hot.

I keed, of course, there are still bands doing the Lord of the Rings stuff, so whatever floats your boat, and who know we may finally get George RR Martin’s new book, before I die. But until then, here is a 5-song EP with song titles like “Mad King”, “Blackfyre”, and “Harrenhal”, but above the GoT themes, there isn’t much else going on here beyond some standard, slightly melodic US black metal.

Shrill, frosty guitars, delivering tremolo-picked riffs over a largely bassless low end and shrieking vocals with a few background bellows is the order of the day, so fans of Dark Funeral et al might dig this. But it’s not until the third song on the EP, “Reign Of Fire”, that anything remotely gets me interested, as it’s pretty standard, OK, not great stuff.

“Reign of Fire” has a solid, fierce, more melodic main riff and some militant and moody mid-paced parts, then the EPs best track, “Blackfyre” has a solid, majestic opening gallop and a few keyboards lingering in the background, which make it another solid track before the closer “Harrenhal”, making it three in a row with a more moody, slower, 6+ minute number, befitting the nsamesake haunting location.

An OK, EP, but nothing I’ll be going back to, but I’ll certainly listen to anything the band does next- maybe a Breaking Bad themed EP?

Such is the case for The Pursuit of…. from Atlanta’s Yosemite in Black. If you are a metalhead and are on Tik Tok, you probably saw the click from the song “Cold Shoulder” blow up a little; great fucking opening riff, cool minimalist black-and-white video, tons of energy. (though ‘cos the internet is shitty, it blew up due to the bass player as well)…

The thing is they don’t even repeat that riff for the rest of the damn song, let alone match the level of awesome for the rest of the album.

Now, to be clear the album isn’t a bad album. It’s a pretty standard Hatebreed/Lamb of God-ish metallic hardcore/groove metal album with some decent moments, a bit of  Southern swagger, some Gatecreeper, Fuming Mouth or Terminal Nation fuzz here and there (i.e. the start of “Just This Once” and end of “Cold Shoulder” have an out of nowhere, literal change in guitar tone).  But man was I expecting a real ban burner based on the “Cold Shoulder” tease….

The rest of the tunes are solid even if it takes five other tunes till you get to the money shot. It’s a sub-30-minute blast with the longest song being the 3:01 minute closer, “Fade Out” a cool little Crowbar/Down-y, swampy, groovy beast.

Other decent moments arise in “Robber Baron”, “Kitsch” and the aforementioned above closer, but none of them come closer to the cock tease that got me to check out this promo in the first place.