AMONG THESE ASHES Album Review: (2025)

AMONG THESE ASHES
“Embers Of Elysium”
Album Review by Iron Mathew

10/10

Among These Ashes are a thrash metal band from the USA formed in 2021, releasing two albums to date – ‘Dominium Enthroned’ (2022) and ‘Embers Of Elysium’ (2024).

Featuring thirteen songs across more than an hour of all out (head) banging thrash metal, ‘Embers Of Elysium’ is a colossal, and quite frankly sensational sixty six minutes of in your face aggression and ferocity mixed with a magnificent melodic edge and a loud groove metal grunt! The sonic onslaught from the Michigan metallers is unforgiving, and will send shockwaves all around the world to immediately grab a tight hold of everyone’s attentions – the two minute instrumental ‘Embers Of Elysium’ is honestly the calm before the storm! The tension fuelled, eerie led instrumental sets an amazing anticipative nature as it builds to a crescendo ready for the thunder, fire and brimstone fuelled ‘Serpents Among Rats’ to brutality batter every listener round the head! The mix of groove, thrash and a little traditional metal is overwhelming, Among These Ashes baring their teeth to roar very loudly! A simply staggering opening salvo to wake the neighbourhood, ‘Embers Of Elysium’ (the album) picks up the pace with the blistering speed of ‘Faceless War Machines’, every mosh pit around the world going fucking mental over this one – the band dropping a few gears as ‘Faceless War Machines’ really gets into its groove! The opening double has been deafening, the band roaring louder than lions – a lion’s roar can be heard from five miles away! That’s eight kilometres! And just to put that into context, a human roar would struggle to be heard at two hundred metres! That’s just two and a half percent of the distance a lions roar can travel!

So to say the Michigan metallers are roaring very loudly, ain’t an understatement – ‘Of One Blood’ entering the fray with an almighty thunder-stomp, the ground shuddering under the immense force oozing from Among The Ashes, the bands groove metal grunt leading the way as an electrifying turn of speed sees ‘Of One Blood’ accelerate along the freeway at full throttle! And with a massive melodic edge, ‘Stronger Than Death’ straddles the genres of traditional, thrash and groove metal, yet loses none of the oomph of the album so far – the band hitting hard with so much power, every listener is gonna be knocked into next fucking week! I just can’t stress enough the huge impact ‘Embers Of Elysium’ (the album) is making – bigger than the light bulb possibly! And they’re used by nearly everyone in the world on a daily basis, so by that reckoning, Among These Ashes and their sophomore album is impacting eight billion people! And without a single pause for a breather, the band show a clean pair of heels as blistering speed lights up the airways with ‘Storm Within’. Flying faster than a bullet, the band are enraged and full of anger, breathing smoke and fire as ‘Storm Within’ devastates planets with boiling clouds of thunder and bolts of steel!

The wide array of metal on offer is magnificent, ‘The Undertow’ landing firmly and squarely at the heavier end of the heavy metal genre, the band shelving their groove for just a moment, but keeping an ounce or two of thrash in the mix – until half way through when everything’s back in the bowl! The varied approach to metal music by Among The Ashes is incredible, the band keeping a tight hold on everyone’s attentions and not letting go – the bands new album a long haul listen and not just a short hop! So make sure your seatbelts are still fastened with seats and table trays in the upright position as this journey is nowhere near over, ‘The Enemy In I’ a crushing blend of everything the band have in their vast arsenal! And at pace too, Among The Ashes travelling faster than the speed of fucking light to send every mosh pit into overdrive, the head of every mosher rocking back and forth at an extremely high rate of knots! One of the heaviest objects on the planet, is the Revolving Service Structure (RSS) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, measured at 5,342,000 lbs – that’s 2,500 tonnes! And I reckon Michigan metallers Among These Ashes are heavier than that! The band are an unforgiving metal machine, ‘Through Ethereal Voids’ returning groove metal to the fore, albeit with a rougher, tougher and more abrasive feel than heard anywhere else so far – and it’s an instrumental to boot! A seven and a half minute long instrumental that keeps you hooked right from the start ’til the very end!

Among The Ashes are unstoppable, flattening everything and everyone standing in their way, ‘The Hybrid Bloodline’ returning ferocity to the fore, speed and aggression too, the band proceeding to change through the gears as ‘The Hybrid Bloodline’ roams all over thrash metal territory, visiting ever corner, nook and cranny to deliver a multitude of metal styles all based around the bands thrash metal roots! ‘A Presence Unknown’ is an eerie and fairly haunting one and a half minute instrumental acting as an intro to the longest song on offer ‘The Obsidian Reign’. Clocking in at a colossal eight and a half minutes in length, ‘The Obsidian Reign’ machine gun riffs its way into sight, demolishing everything in its path – no-one and nothing’s safe from the vicious barrage approaching fast! And as ‘The Obsidian Reign’ stretches its legs, the brutality behind the bands savage brand of thrash metal bludgeons listeners with no remorse whatsoever! The past hour has been a ferocious one, and one that I wanna hear again, but just before I do, the thirteenth and final song on offer is a bonus – an alternative version of (the heard earlier) ‘The Undertow’ featuring fellow Michigan metallers Lady Luna And The Devil’s vocalist Brooke Rousseau taking over lead vocal duties! And boy does this plant a different slant on the bands sound, Rousseau’s sultry voice adding an extra cherry to the cherries already put on top of the icing by the band!

Overall, a sensationally heavy groove laden blast of ferocious thrash metal with tonnes of variation and a sky high head bang ability.

TRACKLIST

Embers of Elysium
Serpents Among Rats
Faceless War Machines
Of One Blood
Stronger Than Death
Storm Within
The Undertow
The Enemy In I
Through Ethereal Voids
The Hybrid Bloodline
A Presence Unknown
The Obsidian Reign
The Undertow (bonus feat. Brooke Rousseau)

https://amongtheseashes.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AmongTheseAshesMetal

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