Detroit, Michigan is in an infamously bad state right now with an economical bankruptcy hanging over its head and a violent crime rate that's through the roof. But amidst all its chaos, Detroit sure seems to have a solid and perhaps even rising Metal scene, and Death/Doom Metal band TEMPLE OF VOID is one of its most recent - and head turning - spawns. Forged by 5 local underground veterans, their 2013 demo record "Demo MMXIII" spread quickly and got them signed to 4 different record labels within 4 weeks to distribute said demo, and now they've returned with their debut album/double-EP, "Of Terror and the Supernatural". So is this band worthy of the hype, or was their demo some kind of one-time hit that they could not reproduce?

After listening through "Of Terror and the Supernatural", I can safely say that TEMPLE OF VOID is definitively worthy of the hype: The recording quality is morbidly excellent, the atmosphere is one of impending and unrelenting doom, the songs are designed to crush, kill and burn anything in its path and the whole album is flat-out great. TEMPLE OF VOID has definitively created a sound that merges the pace and atmosphere of Doom Metal so exceptionally well with the might and power of Death Metal that the whole thing really becomes a soundtrack to the morbid and almost apocalyptic undoing of everything and everyone - while still retaining that ever so important sense of purpose that prevents it from becoming a boring sludge fest.

And though the majority of the songs are similar enough to raise some repetition concerns, TEMPLE OF VOID traverses that line for the most part well enough - thanks to some efficient riffing and song structure - that they would've gotten a pass by me (who's generally somewhat unforgiving to repetitious albums) even if they hadn't included the truly excellent semi-acoustic instrumental track "To Carry This Corpse Evermore" that gave the album a well-timed change of pace and more or less nailed my interest and belief that these guys know what they're doing.

That being said, the only tracks that really left an impact was the two first songs "The Embaler's Art" and "Savage Howl" along with the aforementioned "To Carry This Corpse Evermore", with the rest simply being some enjoyable filler to my experience of "Of Terror and the Supernatural", which isn't exactly optimal and it does lower the album somewhat in my eyes since I do value memorability highly - a downside of being a Melodic Metaller, I guess. But on the other hand the direction of the album is so focused that while the individual songs become less memorable the overall experience isn't harmed at the slightest.

So if that little flag of repetition and some lacking memorability isn't a vast concern, which it truthfully probably shouldn't be, then there's really no reason to not give TEMPLE OF VOID's excellent debut "Of Terror and the Supernatural" a go - It's an excellent Death/Doom Metal album by every measure and by debut album standards this is one hell of a way to get going. Believe the hype folks, TEMPLE OF VOID has entered the scene swinging and like the masochists we are we should help ourselves the morbid, despair-ridden, crushing beating that is "Of Terror and the Supernatural"!