Italian extreme metal scene is vast and fantastic and I am always glad when I discover some new bands and projects from our neighboring country. Crownshard are hailing from Italy, and this is their new opus containing five songs. The music of Crownshard can be described as death metal, it is technically fantastic and tight, but there is more to their music than just that. Lyrically, Crownshard deal with real themes, like depression, death and perdition, raising awareness about ourselves and thus enabling us to fight our inner demons when we need to fight to survive and stay alive in this ever moving today’s world. Besides pummeling death metal with many tempo changes and grooves mixed with blast beats, there are also couple of really fine melodies played with thrash metal and classic heavy metal influence here and there, bordering the music of this band with melodeath. Vocals are growls but quickly changing between screams and more snarling anger and despair, not your usual death metal grunts. My personal favorites are ‘There Is Nothing Left’ and ‘Mankind Has Failed’, but all of the songs are quality death metal played with conviction.

8/10