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This is the kind of album that just doesn't do much for me. It's black metal played with a heavier edge to the guitar tone that makes it sometimes resemble death metal, along with the slightly lower croak of the vocals at that. There are a lot of droning, bleak passages that should probably be atmospheric, but the production job just doesn't make it sound that way. It's just too loud and too chunky to make me really feel anything about it...I can definitely hear the band attempting to conjure some atmosphere, but I am not sure what that atmosphere is supposed to be.

And really, the riffs and songs just aren't that good. This is nothing too offensive but at the end of the day it's just boring, despite the cool band name and song titles. The songs are very by-the-numbers, with trilling guitars and croaking, hollow vocals and what have you. It just comes down to the fact that the songs are not that entertaining or gripping. They need to work on adding more drama, tension and energy to the performances – it's probably there; it just isn't cultivated yet.

One issue I have with this whole subset of metal – this whole modernized black/death/extreme whatever style – is that the drums just aren't that great. Super-fast, triggered-sounding and mechanical drumming is the order of the day, and it's mostly really annoying and blandish sounding. It does not captivate throughout this album's under 40-minute runtime, which actually feels at least ten minutes longer than it should. Now, of course like every other aspect that a band could introduce into their songwriting, this could be done well, if the songs themselves were better written. But I am afraid Hordes of the Morning Star have a long way to go for that.