Three years after their formation in 2014 the Germans of Halphas released their debut full-length, titled Dawn of a Crimson Empire, via Folter Records. With this debut they delivered a heavy dose of pounding black metal. Last December, two years after that debut, vocalist Legatus, drummer Tempestas, bass player Forcas and guitarists Avnas and Thurstan released Dawn of a Crimson Empire‘s successor. This successor is titled The Infernal Path Into Oblivion and is, just as its predecessor, released via Folter Records.
With The Infernal Path Into Oblivion Halphas, again, brings a heavy dose of pounding black metal. However, this album starts quite calm with the intro of opener Into Eternity We Ride. Calm and atmospheric including acoustic guitar, but with an ominous vibe. This intro immediately drags you into this album to, when the thunder kicks in after a little bit over two minutes, get crushed by the full-throttle incoming black metal that, due to this, even sounds more energetic and powerful.
From that moment on the pace mainly stays quite high, with the only exceptions being the intro of Temple of Oak, the outros of Into Eternity We Ride, Monument of Blood, A Grave in the Sands and album-closer Forever Spellbound, and the calm, very melodic, instrumental track The Narrow Descent. A few of those mentioned outros, those of Into Eternity We Ride, Monument of Blood and A Grave in the Sands, sound a bit weird, it almost sounds like they are apart from the rest of those specific songs. The outro of A Grave in the Sands does connect to the succeeding, aforementioned track The Narrow Descent though.
However, that the rest of The Infernal Path Into Oblivion has quite a high pace, doesn’t mean that it is boring. Halphas uses quite a lot of rhythm changes within this high pace, such as in Monument of Blood, with especially the very energetic extra speed-up halfway standing out, Bones and Dust and Forever Spellbound.
Instrumentally Halphas mainly shows chopping drums, such as in Temple of Oak, sometimes with some more epic deep drums added, such as halfway into that same track as well as halfway into Into Eternity We Ride, very tight guitars with multiple layers, such as in Into Eternity We Ride and Forever Spellbound, at some moments a somewhat more humming bass, such as in A Grave in the Sands and Forever Spellbound. On top of that vocalist Legatus adds ominous screams, such as in Bones and Dust and Temple of Oak, sometimes with a little bit of an echoing effect, such as in Into Eternity We Ride and Bones And Dust, at some moments interchanged with clean vocals, such as in Temple of Oak, A Grave in the Sands and Forever Spellbound. That’s a great mix for a very powerful, heavy dose of black metal and that’s exactly what The Infernal Path Into Oblivion is!
Hi!
I’m Tim van Velthuysen and I started DutchMetalManiac back in 2014. I’m 29 years old and I live in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Of course, I like metal, but I can also appreciate other musical styles.
In addition to DutchMetalManiac I also have a personal website on which I’ll post various things that won’t fit on DutchMetalManiac, but might be interesting for you as well. It’s in Dutch though.
