I assume that it has occurred to you my fellow readers that sometimes bands tend to change themselves quite often in order to patch a musical pattern that would be in their future favor and their fans' interest and let's not forget enjoyment. Our little case study of the Greek CHAINED AND DESPERATE, and their new release, proved how important it is for a band to perfect itself so they would sound and perform in the best way possible. I can say that whoever underwent the ten years wait for the band's new album, "Divine Authority Abolishment", via Pitch Black Records, would reckon that it was worth waiting for.

CHAINED AND DESPERATE has been around Extreme Metal that long that it seemed as if they tried it all. However, their latest works showed that they decided, at least for now, to remain in the realms of melodic Black Metal. For what I figured while I listened to this new release, it was definitely a good choice. Moreover, as it was proclaimed on the band's info, this group, even though in a rather extreme pattern, followed their vintage influences of NWOBHM while IRON MAIDEN seems to be one of the prime manipulations, at least of what I could judge from their melodic riffages. Even the band's name was derived from an old song by the NWOBHM band CHATEAUX.

What I also captured from "Divine Authority Abolishment" was that the music was basically rather simple yet, it wasn't banal because there were several of interesting implementations that kept most of the material to become a bit more mysterious and less obvious. I would say that CHAINED AND DESPERATE stretched the boundaries of Black Metal riffages to a certain level that wouldn't point that they suffocated those. Part of the reason why those riffs weren't overused were mainly because of the IRON MAIDEN patterned melodic features. As the band went more into the direction of modern Black Metal, which is more compressed other than raw, it cleared the grounds for Heavy Metal style riffs while being followed by melodies. There are other bands that went into this kind of direction in order to sound better. I can take the Swedish SIEBENBURGEN as the best suitable example.

Due to this amazing mixture between Black Metal and NWOBHM along with two vocals lines that shared the wretched blackish growls that were harmonized pretty well with a tight clean vocal line, those made CHAINED AND DESPERATE to sound in top form. Let's not forget the awesome production that helped this release to still sound like a Black Metal album, yet with a twist that took it onto a promising path.

Some wonderful musical moments of this harmony can be noticed on "Chained", which rather tended to sound like the modern METALLICA, "Rely On Fears", the dramatic elements on the closing "Curtains Of Gold", "Divine Authority Abolishment" and the iconic "Ariadne's Thread". In the bottom line, those past ten years or so were did only good for this band. This album is worth your time and even this is not an old school Black Metal release, it has a lot more than what this subgenre offered in the past.