YEAH!!! This is great stuff. Do you kids enjoy the death metal?
Don't buy this cd because it's the "other" band of the new guitarist from Living Sacrifice. Buy it because it rocks. Soul Embraced has some ultra-aggressive hXc influenced death here. Just imagine taking a heavy Mindrage-esque riff being torn up by a full-on death metal band, and that's just how this 5 song EP gets started. Before long it shifts into a more traditional death sound, and then seems to shift back and forth between the two for the remainder of the album. These work together to produce a sonic apocalypse of absolute ecstasy. For atmosphere, they've also added some scary "exorcist" samples that provide the icing.
Lyrically. . . well, there's no lyric sheet, and I didn't really make a serious attempt to decipher the words, but I do hear screamings about the Holy Spirit and such, so I assume they're good. . . . The production on here isn't sparkling, but it's not bad either, and just a touch of mud does seem to add to the downright frightening sound of this band. Let me also mention the gnarly (never actually used the word "gnarly" before. . .) cover art, and this cd easily stands out among the pack of American indie Christian death metal bands like Discern, Inversion, and Death List.
The only negative here -- as so often is the case with these ep's -- is that it's over so quickly. 16 minutes, in this case. With numbers like that, I feel free to disregard the phrase "bonus track" printed after track 5. Just spin it again, though, this one's definitely worth your money.
9/10
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