Band: The New Dominion
Title: …And Kindling Deadly Slumber
Label: Neurotic Records
Distribution: Bertus
Release date: 23/03/2009
Review: CD

The Dutch formation The New Dominion, formed in March 2006, recorded this first full length with producer Tymon (Cynic). …And Kindling Deadly Slumber differs from the demo-CD And Black Gleams The Eye. The demo brought a Gothenburg-inspired form of Thrash Metal, but those Gothenburg-influences are less important now. Instead, the band combines fast, trans-European Thrash Metal with technical Death Metal. Both music and vocals (grunts versus screams) are prove of this evolution.
As from the first track, The Homecoming (after a very short intro, called Shock And Awe), the band makes clear its statement: they take no prisoners! It is one of the tracks that still has been influenced strongly by bands as In Flames, The Haunted or At The Gates, yet it also includes technical elements from, let’s say, Gojira, and hooked riffs in the vein of Cannibal Corpse. A few excellent passages are slow and balance on the edge of the Doom-Death scene, while a certain old school feeling spices up the whole with a venomous pleasure. Still the lack of originality is sad, yet the variation, as well as the stronger, and more varying compositions may make a (very tiny) difference.
2009 is home to several better (Death-injected) Thrash releases till now, but this year I’ve heard worse at the same time.
Total running time: fifty six minutes.

81/100

Ivan Tibos.