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Well this is certainly more the type of music that I expect from Xtreem Music than that Adramelech album I reviewed a couple of weeks ago! Hour of Penance are a brutal Death Metal band from Italy whose vocalist doesn't sound like he's puking his breakfast - that's always good. :) I'll do away with the bitching right now. The last track has several minutes of silence before ending with a short hidden track (where he does sound like he's puking his breakfast.) Why bands keep doing this kind of shit is beyond me. It's fucking annoying. Hell I even had a member of Winds e-mail me a while back wondering why that kind of stuff annoyed me. Go figure. Anyway.... You can cut a good 5 minutes off the total length of the album, it's all silence.

The first thing that hit me is the sound: Powerful, crisp and clear without being overproduced. Brutal Death Metal is what these guys are about, think of a mix of Immolation, Hate Eternal, Krisiun and a little hint of Vader. Speed of course is at the rendez-vous, but not without some slower stuff such as "End of Relief". Blastbeats aplenty, but not overused (at least for the genre). Well that's it: No gimmicks, no notable innovation, just some plain old good brutal death. Get it if that's your thing.