Band:	Hour Of Penance
Album:	Pageantry For Martyrs
Style:	Brutal death metal
Release date:	June 01, 2005
A review by:	Undercraft

01. Towards Our Storm
02. Shreds Of Martyr
03. End Of Relief
04. Celebrating Collective Terror
05. Far Beyond Humiliation
06. Life In A Pain Amplifier
07. Exiled Innocence
08. Naked Knife Absolution
09. Deranged Parasite
10. Egomanisch

For those who still believe in Death Metal

Last time I heard this band I was pretty bored by their lack of innovation and repetitiveness, is Death Metal supposed to be repetitive and boring? Is Death Metal a genre that has become stagnant? Hour Of Penance first release made me believe that yes, it was a dying genre, until now.

Pageantry For Martyrs is their second album so far, and they've been through many line-up changes these past 2 years, thing that apparently improved their sound, because this is new album is quite an improvement from their debut.

First let's begin with the production, this sounds so much better, you can actually hear the guitars, the bass lines and the soloing, the cover art and visual aspects of the album are much better also.

As for the music, the changes are not that radical, the band didn't reinvent their sound, but at least they polished it, actually you can listen some good ideas in the album, although I must confess that after 2 spins in a row I was really bored. Nevertheless, the effort and the improvement really shows here, in the sound, in the visuals, in the song-writing.

I think this album is a reverence to their main influences, I could hear in each song influences from many bands like Deeds of Flesh, Hate Eternal, Sinister and Vader to name a few. Note that I said influenced, not copied.

If Hour Of Penance keeps this rate of improvement, I can bet that in their 4th or 5th album their going to leave a perennial mark in the Death Metal scene, until then, best of lucks for the Italians!