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Uncrown is the second album from Sweden's Ages, a black metal band that flavors their music with a lot of melody and epic atmosphere. The vocals are raspy without being grating and the guitars create black metal's signature haunting melodies with their tremolo picking but minus much of the dissonance of truly raw black metal. I like that Ages don't feel the need to drone on with 10-12 (or more) minute songs and keep everything at a reasonable 4-5 minutes, just enough time to establish a riff, set an evil or far away atmosphere and wrap things up before the repetition gets distracting. It makes tracks like "Illicit State" and "A Hollow Tomb" much more enjoyable to my ears. If you favor epic black metal like Summoning or Caladan Brood but with far fewer acoustic interludes and no clean singing, I recommend giving Uncrown a long listen.