If you are looking for a new band that plays in a style of music that revolves around Death / Black Metal, you're supposed to find what you are looking for with EMBLAZONED. This American band based in Wisconsin deliver us their second CD EP entitled "The living Magisterium", after their first EP dating from 2005. This band is formed with former members from acts such JUNGLE ROT, MICANBER and DECRESENT so this can give us a very good combination of multi-influence musicians.

It begins with a prelude called "Premonition" and it is already given an idea about the rest of this EP. My predictions are confirmed with the first song "Extinction Of Creation" with a typical tone of Black Metal, that keeps the sufficient brutality of Death Metal. And this is a very smart and perfect mixture between the two most extreme kinds of Metal. "Bound By Eternal Penance" takes the same direction by being more brutal, thanks to Blast Beats wildly interpreted with melodic phrases at the end of the song. The distortion effect in guitars is assayed by millimeter, to be typical at all and what is extreme and Black Metal. The arrangements moves away from the concept of verse - chorus, in fact they are organized according to the different themes addressed in the tracks. "Refuge In Darkness" is a song that changes a little bit the group's attitude towards Doom trend with a down tempo and more simple riffs. The thoroughness of EMBLAZONED members continues until the end of the EP, as we have the right to a last track entitled "In Ex Cathedra", and it is even more dark and cold again reflecting the abyssal coldness of this EP.

All the sounds have been worked with a very good production by Chris Wisco at Belle City Sound in Racine, WI, with a modern way but certainly it has kept the raw aspect of the genre. I advise you to discover this product; you certainly get to enjoy it.