Erimha - Reign Through Immortality

Erimha is to my knowledge the first band of this sort to be featured on Victory Records. The band, whose name is Sumerian for ‘Army’, is a symphonic black metal band with clear influences from the likes of Dimmu Borgir, Behemoth, and Hate. There’s a pretty large divide in black metal between the, for lack of a better word, hipsters of black metal that are into the big anti music movement going on in the subgenre, and the fans of more modern death metal influenced black metal. Erimha falls into the latter with really nice production, a more theatrical feeling and epic symphonic pieces.

Erimha’s sound is crystal clear, and aggressive. One of the strongest points on the album is the building of really fantastic riffs. Each song is chock full of really great riffs that power through each and every song. It does remind me a bit of Hate and Behemoth, but Erimha does a great job making it their own. The drums are also really impressive and have this awesome thunderous feel that really adds to the theatrical feel of the album. This production on this album really makes it feel like the soundtrack to an impending war.

The vocals on the album are fairly standard as far as black metal goes, provided by a man who goes by the name Gore, which is awesome. The vocals don’t have a huge amount of variety, which can make them at times the weaker point of the music, but it definitely fits the style and can make some songs, like ‘Verdict Of The Soul’ even better. Carach Angren’s vocalist has very interesting vocals, using a variety of screams and creepily done spoken word that gives you chills. I don’t know that that sort of thing would fit Erimha’s music, but I would have liked for them to play with the vocals a tad bit more.

The final track on the album, ‘Metempsychosis’, is quite a beast. At just over 10 minutes, it’s the longest track on the album by a long shot. I didn’t have the lyrics on hand, so I’m not sure if the song is about what the word refers to, which is the transmigration of the soul. This song is also one of the most interesting vocally, it’s one of the few times we get some non-screamed vocals, and it works to great effect.

Erimha is fairly new to the game, and I am not sure I’d be ready to put them on my best of list before Hate’s new album Solarflesh and with Behemoth supposedly releasing an album this year, things are only going to get tougher for them, but Reign Through Immortality is a far stronger album than I had expected going into this. It’s easily on par with bigger bands in the genre, and with Victory now backing Erimha, they should get a pretty hefty increase in promotion now.