This is the first time I heard about the Australian band The Amenta. They play a combination of black, death, gothic and thrash; to make things simple The Amenta is extreme metal. The Amenta started to play in 2000 and made a self released MCD called “Mictian” in 2002. When the people at Listenable Records heard that MCD they singed them right away. “Occasus” is the first full length album of this extreme Australian metal band. The songs are built up with some kind of concept in mind. This results in some strange effects in the songs and sometimes there is some gothic interlude in the middle of a song. The second track (“Mictlan”) is an example of this. The whole song is aggressive and after 2 minutes and 30 seconds the death trash metal sound changes to the sound of a gothic band’s intro and after this interlude “Mictlan” has gotten a totally different sound. Personally I like this sound difference in every number. “Mictlan” is not the only song with such an interlude. “Sangre” (the last song on the album) has also got a cool interlude. After the interlude, which last for about one minute, the song goes further with more instruments than ever before and you almost don’t hear the vocals anymore, that’s a little bit pity.

All the songs are full of samples from weird sounds like burning things and some Russian radios. “Senium”, the fourth song on this album, is getting me a little bit scared. You hear some slow: “boom, boom” and a train. Like in horror movies, everything can happen and you don’t want to look behind you because there is the guy with the knife. The track is instrumental and the ending sounds like: that’s it, everything is gone. I can’t really explain this sound; it’s weird, scary and cool, you have to hear it yourself. As always I think the sound of the vocals are very important; the vocals of The Amenta’s singer are great and sometimes a little bit scary. There is one thing I am not sure about on this album and that is the drums, the drums are played so fast and tight that I think it is a drum computer. If it isn’t a drum computer then I would like to know more about the condition of the drummer and how he is going to play this music live on stage.