Band:	Strigoi
Album:	Abandon All Faith
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	November 22, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. The Rising Horde
02. Phantoms
03. Nocturnal Vermin
04. Seven Crowns
05. Throne Of Disgrace
06. Carved Into The Skin
07. Parasite
08. Iniquitous Rage
09. Plague Nation
10. Enemies Of God
11. Scorn Of The Father
12. Abandon All Faith

Punky doomy death metal side project from a Paradise Lost member. No, it's not Vallenfyre, even though all three members were in Vallenfyre.

Was there a need to change the name from Vallenfyre? Probably yes, since My Dying Bride's Hamish Hamilton Glencross is no longer in the band, but Vallenfyre was formed by Gregor Mackintosh as a creative output to deal with the death of his father so it seems to me like it wasn't that necessary, though being Romanian and having a death metal band of a pretty high caliber being named after a mythological creature from my country is indeed pretty neat. So regardless if this should or should not be considered somewhat of a Vallenfyre album, here we have Abandon All Faith as a Strigoi album.

The biggest problem that I found about it is that, after reading our review of the latest Vallenfyre album, I found that I could copy most of it word for word (except for the song examples for each sound) and it would fit for Abandon All Faith as well. Both of them are death metal albums that are really well put together and have a lot of different influences and sounds weaving into them, from doom to punk to grind to first wave black metal, to even some slight touches of Mackintosh' original band, Paradise Lost; and this is generally the place where one would give an example of a song for each of those, but I find that quite unnecessary.

However, even though the similarities in style and personnel (obviously felt mostly in the vocals) between Abandon All Faith and the aforementioned previous record(s), the mix of punky death and doomy death on Abandon All Faith feels a bit more direct and engaging on this record, constantly shifting and blending the two. The performances are tight, which is probably a result of this basically having been a live lineup in the previous band, and with Mackintosh being the only one to perform guitars on this record puts a lot more weight on this guitar-play specifically. But I'll be damned if I don't mention Waltteri Väyrynen's drum performance, who showed up five years ago and in the meantime has played with some of the biggest bands ever, like Paradise Lost, Amorphis, Moonsorrow, Wolfheart, Bloodbath and Abhorrence, and if his performance on this record is to be his resume, he deserves those spots.

I can probably name quite a few records from this year that blend death and doom better than Abandon All Faith, but ones that also blend d-beat and crust punk? Now that's a challenge.