01. The Cold Embrace of A Fresh Temptation
02. Wasted To A Clone
03. A Fearless Minion
04. The Illusion of the 2nd Circle
05. An Extreme Conquered By the Hand of An Architect
06. Haunting
07. Whore is a Lifestyle
08. To Spit on Idols and Tabus
09. The Grotesque
10. Breath of Leeches
11. When the Wait Becomes My Kingdom [bonus]
12. The Mystique That Flows With [bonus]

I do believe that when a band records an album, they should have a general idea of what they want to achieve. The general tendency is either that the songs have been written and rehearsed beforehand, or that the band enters the studio and musicians pool their skills and ideas to create new music. Whichever is the case, the musicians already know which direction they want to take and what kind of music they want to present to the public.

That's a theory which doesn't always agree with practice. When I listened to Erebus Redemption's debut album, A Pawn of Darkness, I never stopped asking myself - what were you (guys) thinking or smoking? I will probably never know the answer to this question, especially after having listened to "A Pawn of Darkness" for this review, I will never touch it again, even with a ten-foot pole, let alone play it.

So what do we have here? Electro-synth-plastic intro that sounds like unreleased Trey Azagthoth's warm-up tunes for "Heretic." A ferocious, utterly chaotic and mindless riffage of "Wasted to A Clone" that probably tries to be a death metal track, especially judging by the drumming, or, to be exact, a badly programmed second-hand drum machine that is about to give out its last breath. The vocals oscillate between deathy growling and Donald-Duck-on-speed shrieks that sound very much like Dani Filth on a bad day, which inevitably gives a blackish edge to the music. "The Illusion of the Second Circle" continues down the path of pointless death metal without structure, but with numerous failed trips towards other genres. "An Extreme Conquered by the Hand of An Architect" is another (abortive) attempt at creating atmosphere with keyboards. This time it sounds as if Varg Vikernes was trying to play his Casio tunes while bending down to pick up soap somewhere in the showers of a Norwegian detention facility. It's only saving grace is somewhat intriguing, even though completely senseless title. All the records of bad songwriting are broken by "Haunting". Techno beats, death metal, distorted vocals, clean vocals, slow parts, fast parts - the song is as chaotic as this sentence. But it somehow miraculously manages to make even less sense...

For pity's sake, a song needs to have some logical progression of riffs, chords, bridges, solos, whatever. There is nothing like that on "A Pawn of Darkness", it's a total mess. The only glimmer of hope is the instrumental "When the Wait Becomes My Kingdom" which, while as chaotic as anything else here, does contain a few decent, memorable riffs. Use such good riffs, build STRUCTURED songs around them and you may yet make a decent album, unlike this one.

Performance:	4
Songwriting:	3
Originality:	4
Production:	4