SHATTER MESSIAH is one of those bands that comes together with musicians of the highest pedigree from one genre or style, and somehow creates something extremely unexpected and different. With former members of ANNIHILATOR, DEATH, and more, I wasn't sure whether to expect old school thrash metal or death metal. Instead, SHATTER MESSIAH gives us the weird bastard love child of thrash and power metal with a little bit of prog and doom mixed in. It's with the merits of its members, and with the fact that they manage to incorporate so many different styles in to their own unique sound, where they pull off what should be a great album. However they wind up with something decent, but not as great as it should be.

It's the cool little blends of genres that makes SHATTER MESSIAH unique, and if you were to listen to one or two tracks, you'd probably quite enjoy what you were hearing. However somehow even with that unique sound, it just didn't grab me in the way I felt that it should have. As I said, most indivudal songs are strong and stand on their own quite well. There are the odd exceptions like "Nothing Friend" which sounded kind of weak and ends with a weird fade out, but for the most part, the songs are quite good. There's never a particular time where you stand up and say "wow this is incredible" but they do a good job of putting together some solid songs that show a great amount of musical prowess and a fantastic understanding of so many different genres of metal. Each member of the band is clearly skilled at what they do, and their song writing shows a certain amount of originality. Really, musically, SHATTER MESSIAH aren't doing anything wrong, and I'll admit that they surely have earned a whole lots of fans out there.

"Orphans Of Chaos" marks the fourth full length album by the band, and is also released with the three track EP, "Full Blood Moon". I can honestly say that when this three track EP becomes available as a separate release on vinyl, as it hopefully will be, that I will definitely pick up a copy. In these three tracks, my attention was suddenly grabbed in such a way that the main album had not done. I'm not sure how the song writing process on this EP differed from the rest of the album, but it ups the power and intensity to a massive degree on "Full Blood Moon" and "Dead Eye Liar" before a great classic power metal sounding anthem to end the album with "Disallussion of My Misery". Yes the spelling on that title is a little off, but it can be clearly overlooked once you hear the song.

SHATTER MESSIAH have certainly earned my respect with their unique sound and significant skill, however the majority of "Orphans Of Chaos" just didn't feel interesting enough. "Full Blood Moon" on the other hand, shows exactly what the band is capable of and is an amazing added bonus.

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Overall Rating: 7/10