Band:	Grimbane
Album:	Let The Empires Fall
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	February 2008

01. Crush The Set Of Beliefs
02. Tyrannize Intro
03. Tyrannize Christians
04. Obscurity Reigns
05. Unscrupulous Religion Intro
06. Unscrupulous Religion
07. Instinct For Iniquity Intro
08. Instinct For Iniquity
09. Cauldron Of Burning Iron
10. God Cremated
11. Let The Empires Fall Intro
12. Let The Empires Fall
13. Overlord Of Chaos And Evil
14. Theomicrians Descend On Angels
15. Before The First Day

Grimbane started out only last year, but already see a full-length being released on Moribund. Consisting of an ex-Blasphemy member and hailing from Canada, you can almost immediately hear bad-produced and sloppy "War Metal". But no, not this time, not with this band. "Let The Empires Full" presents cold Black Metal, strongly influenced by the "Second Wave", and in particular, Immortal.

Barbarous' vocals are not full-out distorted screams, but rather rasped, well-pronounced vocals. Imagine Abbath (Immortal) on one of his lesser days, and you get the picture. As for instrumentation and production, the similarities to Immortal once again appear. Well-produced, not overdone Black Metal with a slight 'epic' touch in their guitar riffs. While the riffs are mostly single and based on the common Black Metal chord progression, they do have a bit of that majestic feeling that Immortal had.

One thing they really overdid are the amount of intros. Seriously, an intro, even if it is the nth rant about the weak God of Christianity, can be very cool and a good introduction to the music, but not every song on the album needs one. Because of the definite overkill, they get very tiring after a while. It just puts you right out of place every once in a while, and that's probably not what they were supposed to do.

However, this is not a bad album by any means. It just lacks a big pair of balls and power to make up for its unoriginality. And they should cut down on the intros. Other than that, for a début album this is above average, and they get my head up.