I hear some Fleshgod Apocaplypse, some Bal-Sagoth, some Dimmu Borgir, some Hiss From the Moat and any other number of keyboard  fantasy themed symphonic black metal. The keyboards are dominant  and much more symphonic black metal and  utilized more than say the upcoming Blood Ages album, a relatively  comparable album. But they are well done and suitably majestic and epic.

The second of the bands aural novellas, The Exile takes  place  during ‘Soyumoth’s War in the plain of Sovael’- and not set in their home town of Hickory, North Carolina for some reason. The rest of the music is a modern form of progressive sort of death/black metal pulling from a wide array of influences (think Black Crown Initiate mixed with Dimmu). It probably would not hold up near as well without the theatrics, symphonics or female vocals, but all together it’s got lots of burly death metal moments, blasting black metal, swelling choirs, plenty of regal, majestic blasts and lots of atmospheric, move score-ish, story setting moments. Yeah, it’s cheesy, and the musical equivalent of LARPing,  but I’m sucker for this kind of cheese.

“Resurrecting the Blood Gate” gets right to it after a short acoustic intro, and the rest of the next 7 songs pretty well deliver the same thing. Aptly named  “The Epic of Sarnek” and menacing  lumber of “Crucible of Titans” are early highlights . Things bog down a little with “Resurgence”  and “Dark Witch Spire”, two more restrained tracks. But the title  track delivers a superb brass laden Summoning blast and and closer “Planetary Cenotaph” has some very well done angelic female choirs and multi vocal chant ,again imbuing Summoning.

On the minor downside, the drums are super programmed sounding, adding a bit of synthetic tone to the other wise fantastical orchestrated delivery, and  the inhaled growly male vocals are a tad deathcore-y ( and there are some sort of ‘breakdowns’)  and talky, but those are minor quibbles  with an other wise epic little romp that I really enjoyed and will enjoy the rest of the year.