Music is a strange thing. Every so often I will come across an album that is beyond a doubt fantastic and incredibly well made but for some reason, I just can't fall in love with it. The debut album from AUSTERYMN is one such album and it saddens me to say that something about it just doesn't quite hit the spot.

They released a two-track promo back in 2013 and it seems that they've been busy over these last two years. The recently released full length album Sepulcrum Viventium contains a more polished version of that promo, along with 10 (not counting the intro) shiny new offerings from the darkest bowels of Stoke.

My first concern with the album was shortly after the intro track finished. The opening guitar line on the second song has the painfully familiar tone of anything I recorded when I was still at school. I don't know what it is open this opening lick but it has buried it's way into my head like some insidious brain worm. It blends into the rest of the song and this strange amateurish sound is quickly overlaid with themes of deep evil and probable assault.

The general tone of the album is good and Deathy, there are some fantastic riffs and a few solos that make want to perform some kind of act of removal to my facial regions. The vocals have enough balls behind them to impregnate an IVF clinic full of barren pensioners and this is exactly the kind of thing that wets my gills these days. Even these factors though don't seem to be enough in this instance and I have been left wanting something more.

The issue seems to be that it is all very formulaic, a trend that seems to be very popular in the more extreme ends of Metal these days. If you start a song at about 1/5^th the way through and listen for 5 seconds, then skip to around half way through you will be listening to exactly the same riff. If you then skip to ¾ through you will hear a breakdown or solo. In every song. Now that I have discovered this weird pattern I'm going to have to go back and listen to every other Metal album I've heard in the last year and see if they follow this trend.

Nit-picking aside, this is a very good album and one that I would be proud to have created. Unfortunately it does lean on the stick of generic balance so there is nothing particularly memorable about the overall experience. I think this would make perfect background music for a conversation about raising kids or growing vegetables.<