Band: Lightning Swords Of Death
Title: The Extra Dimensional Wound
Label: Metal Blade Records
Distribution: Rough Trade
Release date: May 21st 2010
Review: CD

In the first half of this century, three South Californian musicians joined forces to start Lightning Swords Of Death. Their mutual passion for both extreme music and occult sciences got canalised in a furious and insane package with a first demonic creation, called The Golden Plague, in 2007, as result. A split with Valdur followed in 2008, and then things suddenly went fast. Last year the band signed a deal with Metal Blade, and the band was asked to create material for both a PSP game (Undead Knight) and a horror / thriller movie (Stepfather).
In mean time the band went on tour with, for example, Danzig (2007-2008) and Behemoth (kick off was in January this year), and to promote their second studio full length, The Extra Dimensional Wound, the band hit the road with bands as Kataklysm, Kreator, Evile and Lazarus A.D.
This album was recorded at the Californian Trench Studio with guitar player Roskva handling the production duties, John Haddad (The Funeral Pyre, Phobia, Abysmal Dawn, Intronaut, Eyes Of Fire a.o.) taking care of the engineering, and Demonical’s Sverker Widgren doing a splendid job with the mix and mastering at the famous Swedish Necromorbus Studio (Merrimack, Setherial, Vanmakt, Svartsyn, Tribulation etc).
The cover artwork is super and perfectly fits the magisterial hymns on The Extra Dimensional Wound. As from the very first seconds, the album crushes and makes the world tremble, it’s exploding and imploding at the same time, this is massive, megalithic, unearthly forceful. The extremely intense and pounding blackened hymns are as deadly and bloody as the most influential bands from, let’s say, Norway and Sweden, and the combination of USBM and Nordic Black Metal sounds superior in all its facets. Most parts are varying from up-tempo to fast, a few pieces blast mercilessly, yet the band also includes several slow pieces (like the superior epos Venter Of The Black Beast; personally I think it’s the strongest track on the album). And never, not ever, I get disappointed. Damn, Paths To Chaos, Invoke The Desolate One, Zwartgallig (that’s not English, dear reader, aha!), the title track, never mind, the album is a superior eight-act masterpiece from the highest order.
Probably one of the best releases this year, and without any doubt one of the best things ever released through Metal Blade!

94/100

Ivan Tibos.