As I wrote in the review of "Tales of Woe - The Journey of Odysseus, Part I - From Ilion to Hades", the German trio IMPERIOUS released two albums focusing the themes of Homer's poem "The Odyssey". One year after it, they released the second part, "Tales of Woe (The Journey of Odysseus, Part II - From Hades to Ithaca)", the album that is being reviewed on these lines.

As it seems, musically, "Tales of Woe (The Journey of Odysseus, Part II - From Hades to Ithaca)" shows no difference between the musical genre and the elements that IMPERIOUS used the same elements: a mix between Death and Black Metal with epic atmosphere and different elements from the usual. Along with the first album, this one form a complete work, so expect great changes from the first part to the second is strange. Epic, brutal, aggressive, with some clean parts and acoustic moments, the same way they did before.

The sound quality remembers a lot the first part, being raw and aggressive, fitting on the band's musical work. To be honest, is almost the same. So we could assume that IMPERIOUS recorded both albums on the same sessions on the studio. This hypothesis is not an absurd, because recording two albums as they were one is a possibility, but to release both of them at the same time could be a dangerous strategy to use on these days where everyone prefers to get music on internet.

Then, closing the epopee, we have very good songs once more, but only seven of them (while in the first album, we had 10 songs). So the instrumental "Of Causalities (and the Further Way)" (extremely fine acoustic moments, dense and filled with an introspective feeling), the melodic insight of "Sirens" (a jewel in the middle of the brutal outfit of the band's music), the perfect dynamics between bass guitar and drums shown on the long "The Isle of the Solar God", the bitterness that fills the heavy song called "Scorn", the excellent "Bloodbound - The Bow of Odisseus" (that shows slow tempos and the aggressive melodies that are a trademark of the band, fusing melodic moments with raw ones), and the introspective and nasty "At the Olive Tree" (excellent guitars along good keyboards parts and clean vocals fill the song) are the finest moments of the album. So we can see some evolution on this second part.

Looking for both albums as they were one, we can say that "Tales of Woe (The Journey of Odysseus, Part II - From Hades to Ithaca)" seems to be more melodic then "Tales of Woe (The Journey of Odysseus, Part I - From Ilion to Hades)". And they really have potential to create something better than they showed on these albums, so let's hope that 2018 will bring news about them (I believe I read somewhere that they are about to release a new album this year).