Rising throw you head-first into a sweat-filled mosh pit, every doomed power-chord flows like lava from the speakers, biting at the senses as the band fires on all cylinders. On their latest and fourth-offering "Sword And Scythe", the Danish-quintet manage to make strides forward under the weight of intense-distortion, so heavy that most bands would fold under it however, through it all they manage to keep it rich without sacrificing melody or slipping into repetition.

From the incendiary-instrumental opening; "Amor Fati" and continuing across the twelve-tracks, Rising bring us on a conceptual journey, themed with the faith of mankind.  As they weave through the tracks bring fourth surprises through excellent hooks in between the sonic assault, "Empirical" highlights the style they use, the vocals are unexpectedly entertaining, Grønnegaard's delivery is more in the area of the late Chris Cornell than Bruce Dickinson, not what you would expect against the orbit in which they dwell.

The lyrics sometimes meander at times, losing a bit of the focus, "Camp Century" suffers from this only slight fault but the expertise put into each song is immaculate, the vision mixed with the aggressive nature of the delivery makes this a strong collection. "White Heat" with its distorted bass attack which opens this crunching, almost grunge-fest of guitar-acrobatics is one of the standouts, when this segues into the soft piano of "Ancestral Sun" a very 70s-style sound appears, this album may not be prog-rock bound although it is progressively based in its roots.  With sharp and short songs, the flow of the album steers it away from the pretentious territory of creating metal-theatre, instead a thread-pulses through the album leaving the songs work on their own, that in itself shows the extent the band has gone to.

The second and very eerie instrumental is "Civil Dawn", this track would not be out of place on a 60s-folk album, this flute-driven number disrupts the album-flow, it may seem out of place however, from the perspective of the album it does act as an intro to the doom-heavy "Salted Earth". On "Kill Automation" Rising are evenly balanced with passion and violence, another standout which, although short does have enough impact to peel the layers off the competition in this field. The album climaxes with the longest cut "Aeterna" which utilizes all which came before it, everything is thrown into the mix, vibrations of all the aspects which made the album stand-up as ambitious materializes as it slowly fades into an electrostatic.

Rising has delivered a very adventurous album, one which works perfectly well and also could have drowned in the depths of its own notions, it is extremely listenable regardless of the story line which it is based on and it is a fine release to mark the bands first decade in music.