Band: Thy Bleeding Skies
Title: Autumn Souls
Label: Whirlwind Records
Distribution: Gordeon Music / Displeased Records / Plastic Head Distribution
Release date: June 17th 2011
Review: CD

Thy Bleeding Skies, formed in 2006 by Claudio A. Enzler and currently with former or session members of e.g. My Darkest Hate, Sacred Steel or Deuteronomium, hail from Germany, yet they do sound rather Scandinavian all right. It has to do with the icy sound, of course, which is as freezing and grim as many releases from the North, and with the musical approach as well, even though Thy Bleeding Skies do not perform Scandinavian Death Metal an sich (and the drummer isn’t German, aha).
The debut album, Chapters Of Downfall, showed a strong band that was still looking for an own face, yet it did certainly not stop the members to tour intensively throughout Europe. Autumn Souls, the second full length, lasts for fifty minutes and is an improved, matured adaptation of Thy Bleeding Skies’ debut effort.
After the one-minute intro to the opening song, the ‘core’ of Thy Bleeding Skies soon reveals its true side. Opener The Chaos That Comes is mid-tempo, ultra-heavy, cumbersome and oppressive, yet epic as well, and does sound more than outstanding. No, I won’t call this original, yet the combination of so many grandiose elements, perfectly interacting with each other, transcends the mediocre. The whole certainly is conceived as modern (especially certain atmospheric guitar melody lines), yet clearly based on traditional structures (rhythm section).
Vocals: very deep growls with some additional black-edged screaming grunts.
Besides the Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian scene, this band incorporates details from their native scene as well, and the Dutch / Belgian as well. …I’m still referring to the activities during the (first part of the) nineties.
No stupidly exaggerated production, no progressive complexity or catchy joy-and-happiness, no catchy Pop-tunes, yet timeless and hauling mid-tempo Death Metal with a mature and experienced line-up to create and perform Super-Death from Winterland.

90/100

Ivan Tibos.