At first glance, you might mistake "The Pact" by LUCIFER'S CHALICE to be an EP because it is only 4 tracks long. Then you quickly notice the lengths of all these tracks, in total averaging probably around nine minutes and ranging from seven - eleven. Unlike tasting a refreshing carbonated drink such as 7-11, unfortunately, listening to this debut release may not be a pleasant experience to many.

Immediately when starting up "Hung at the Crossroads" a guitar lead is heard at a blaringly loud volume such that you can barely make out the strumming guitar part happening behind. The guitar tone on this thing is extremely fuzzy, filled with harsh tinny high frequencies, and played in a very unclean manner. Now, by "clean," I don't mean that the tone shouldn't be distorted. When instrumentalists converse with one another they often refer to playing as being clean in guitars when: a) the player is able to mute the strings not being played to reduce noise while b) playing rhythmically tight or at least in a way that serves the music aesthetically. I hate to say, but the guitar playing here doesn't manage to do either.

The drums (which are, throughout the record, not super tight either but not on the degree of the guitars) start to come in shortly after with a little fill and you can tell at least at the tracking stage that these drums are well recorded, but in the context of the whole band mix everything doesn't gel like it should. The mix is muddied... far too live sounding for a studio album like this, so it's no surprise to look on Encyclopedia Metallum to see this is potentially only the second metal album engineer Neil Combstock mixed and mastered. Maybe he was going for a bit of a lo-fi or throwback sound to when recording technology wasn't as advanced in order to suit the old school genre being played, yet this has been done far better by other bands as of late. Namely OPETH on their first two endeavors into their newer prog rock sound: "Heritage" and "Pale Communion."

This LUCIFER'S CHALICE album unfortunately is a culmination of problems that I found of two of the previous albums I reviewed. It parallels the final album WARBEAST put out in that the tracks blend together for the most part, and the BLEEDING album that just dropped because of a bit of tuning issues, at least in the vocals. You could "drop the needle" at multiple points in these songs and it would sound like you haven't really gone to a different part. The songs don't manage to fill their runtime by including a lot of different things dynamically, it almost seems like their only purpose in being long is to fill the space for a full-length album. And this makes them drag on and on. Two minutes in any one of these songs feels like much longer.

Keep in mind, I'm not particularly averse to doom metal, which they're clearly going for here: a sort of NWOBHM influenced and pre-thrash era style of doom. But I can't get behind the execution at all. In fact, I'm going to be reviewing a doom album in November that I actually am enjoying a great deal so far. But for a style of playing music that has become known for being slower and more classic amidst an ever-growing trend to be faster and more "technical" these guys still miraculously manage to not be tight.

Track 3, "Full Moon Nights," needs to be singled out as well. I almost found this to be an OK song because it has some genuinely decent parts in it. In large part, the compositional style here is the same as the rest of the record. Right from the beginning musical sections there's some actual headbangable riffs, and the band actually sounds tight for a few sections of this song. It starts veering off course when the vocals get pitchy again past about a minute and a half, and the middle of the song is one of the most memorable parts of the record. Sadly, I don't mean memorable in a good way. I can only describe the section that comes in just before the three-minute mark as... one of the most uninspired melodies and grooves with cheesy hook lyrics I've ever heard. Shortly after that we hear a guitar solo that is falling over itself rhythmically in its performance. I found this section at 2:55 - 4:47 to be so musically hopeless that I would actually recommend you check it out below. I've actually found myself going back listened to it tons of times this past week, enjoying it in an ironic manner. It's like, if anyone reading is familiar with it, the movie "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau... truly profound.

The closing song, "Priestess of Death" also has some riffs that are either good or have potential, with some genuinely decent speed metal sections actually finding their way onto the album in the middle of this track. Speaking of potential, the real shining star on the context of this album, I find, is bassist Dan Hughes. Usually the bass is the only thing that doesn't sit well in most mixes, and yet in this case the inverse is true. He also sounds pretty practiced, especially at points where you can really hear him like on this closing cut. To me, it almost comes across as though he's struggling to try and keep things in time as best he can amidst some of his bandmates' less-than-stellar performances. Even on this last song, which is probably the best on the album, there are some pretty rudimentary and poorly placed guitar harmonies. Still, at only seven minutes it definitely drags the least and actually has a sense of finality with a nice outro section that wraps up the record well.

I can't lie and say I recommend this. Remarkably, I can still tell you a way you can support the more talented half of these musicians that I would heavily recommend. Aforementioned Dan Hughes actually has a death metal band called WINDS OF GENOCIDE with the drummer on here, Kat Shevil, and she does vocals instead of drums. Her screams are actually really awesome, and that band has much tighter performances and songwriting from what I've listened. But here's "Full Moon Nights" so you can come to your own conclusions.