France always produces great Death Metal of all varieties-Death Metal, Death/Thrash Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Technical Death Metal-so it's an automatic bias in favor of a band when I hear they're from France. Luckily for me, seems like that assumption holds up with TREYHARSH (despite the odd and a little cringy moniker). The album opener "The King's Name" is a strong barrage of stomping riffs after the brief monologue intro, which I gather was taken from some French leader's speech.

TREYHARSH are adept at the classic Melodic Death/Thrash Metal tactic of crafting demanding yet catchy, hook-laden parts. A great example of this is the chorus to "The Fur, The Reign, The Fall", with its staccato low end and ringing high notes. The harmonized guitar line towards the end is another strong compositional moment. For all that, they are not afraid to simplify things when appropriate; although there are plenty of acrobatic riffs on "Lust", one of the more dominant ones is a simple, pounding low note chug punctuated by shifting fills, which hit all the harder because they are set against such a simple backdrop.

"The Inside Part 1" sees TREYHARSH getting a little bit progressive, with a clean interlude about two and a half minutes in atop which the band layers slightly dissonant melody lines. The song ends with a wistful arpeggiated fade out, which "The Inside Part 2" (despite being the second to last song on the album) sort of echoes in its intro, albeit with distortion. Both parts are packed with agile yet consonant and addictive riffs, but unlike the first part, "The Inside Part 2" has no progressive elements, with no lengthy interludes or clean guitars to be heard.

Overall, this album seems to be leaning more towards the Thrash Metal side of things, with straight-ahead, chugging riffs and dexterous double bass drumming (not blast beats). The vocals are the clearest Death Metal element of TREYHARSH's music-deep, roaring, and hoarse. Riffs like the pedal tone riff in "Agoraphobic" are emblematic of New Wave of Thrash Metal songwriting devices, which the band blends with more dissonant parts to craft their own take on the genre.

Interestingly, the only song to open with clean guitar also has one of the coolest riffs on the whole album. That song is "Lonewolf", and the riff in question reminds me a little bit of "Spirit Crusher" by DEATH, which is a Melodic/Progressive Death Metal classic. "Lonewolf" is followed by the anthemic "Constantly Oppressed", which is built on a base of defiant triplet riffing in the vein of AT THE GATES or AMON AMARTH. The galvanizing marching feel is carried by the spastic yet perpetually locked in drumming. "Constantly Oppressed" would be an excellent song to mosh to.

The album closes with its title track, "Eternal Cycles", which never holds back even a little bit. Similarly infatuated with triplets as "Constantly Oppressed", the song unleashes an impressive array of riffs, fills, and tremolo bursts from beginning to end. "Eternal Cycles" feels very cohesive despite the variety of ideas it contains, because many of the riffs are variants of earlier ideas and all flow logically from one another.
If you like Melodic Death metal or Death/Thrash Metal, TREYHARSH is a good band to check out; they'll probably appeal to you if you like Thrash Metal as well, as long as growled vocals don't bother you. The riffing is strong and complements the vocals, and vice versa; even if sometimes it feels like the guitar could be more prominent in the mix. Eternal Cycles is a worthy addition to the Death Metal lexicon.