ARES KINGDOM

ARES KINGDOM have always been revered as bad mofos when it came to death-tinged thrash metal, helped in no small part by the band's pedigree (specifically, guitarist Chuck Keller and drummer Mike Miller of ORDER FROM CHAOS fame). The problem — regardless of the fact that the Kansas City group may not have considered it to be one — is that recognition has largely been relegated to the deeper half of the underground; those "in the know", if you will. If you were lucky enough to have seen ARES KINGDOM in all their feral glory in a club or in somebody's basement, then chances are you became an instant convert. The point is that "Incendiary", the follow-up to 2006's lordly "Return to Dust", might be the album that sees the rest of the "scene" getting with the program and giving credit where credit is due.

We already know that at least every other reviewer is going to write it and I'm going to write it too because the following statement is 100 percent accurate; the album title speaks volumes about what ARES KINGDOM offers on "Incendiary". It is an album packed with hot riffs and even hotter (and well developed) solos, including an equally scorching tone and an overall attack that will pose an uninsurable risk to carpeted areas due to the sparks shooting out of the speakers. It's true.

Some of us already knew that ARES KINGDOM brought it hard, fast, and dirty with the aforementioned fiery riffs, as well as bassist Alex Blume's (NEPENTHE, BLASPHEMIC CRUELTY) throat-pitted vocals. "Incendiary" stands apart from "Return to Dust" primarily due to the paths taken by the arrangements on the former. Songs are more dynamic, even marginally progressive, and offer more in the way of variety without any wasted spaced. We're not talking ORPHANED LAND dynamic or anything. It is just that on "Incendiary", ARES KINGDOM makes every pace shift count, every break impact, and every riff and solo turn skin to liquid. It could be the movement from barn burning thrash to crunching march on "Descent of Man", the trad-metal shades of "The Destruction of Sennacherib", or a style on "Ashen Glory" that falls somewhere between raw thrash and the epic end of IMMORTAL; the tune is also inclusive of some rather elegant segments. It is the way that the eight-minute "Abandon in Place" sounds frantic and pointed at once, as well as the way that the colors fade into one another, or it could be something as simple as the placement of dark instrumental "Consigned to the Ages". Never fear, the waging of war is still job one, but nobody said there was only one way to kill the enemy.

One should be careful using words like "maturity" in the context of a sweaty, rutting beast like ARES KINGDOM, but now that we've sufficiently dirtied up and qualified it, we can go ahead and use it. "Incendiary" shows maturation in songwriting, yet still swoops down upon you like so many Corsairs blanketing a concentration of enemy soldiers with napalm somewhere near Yudam-ni during the Korean War.