Hour Of Penance from Rome, Italy play un-Italian fucking brutal death metal with a style that hangs in-between Hate Eternal, Deeds Of Flesh, Gorgasm and other U.S. brutal death metal bands. The bio states that Nile was also a big influence but I must admit I don’t hear that in the sound. Hour Of Penance was formed in 1999 and have released a demo and 7” before signing to Xtreem Music. The debut “Disturbance” was released in 2003 and was awarded the title CD of the month in several underground webzines.

Like Gorgasm, Hour Of Penance tend to mix lightspeed death metal with slower, grooving parts which broadens the musical spectrum very heavily. Instead of always going faster and faster, it’s sometimes better to bring the speed them to make the overall impact of the music even heavier. Gorgasm knows this trick well and Hour Of Penance also make good use of this.

The sound on “Pageantry For Martyrs” is also un-Italian good. Heavy and brutal, just the way death metal should sound. Quite an achievement for an unknown studio like the 16th Cellar Studio.
The running time seems a bit steep for such an extreme album but this is due the fact that there is a “hidden” track after the last song. In between the last and the extra track is six minutes of silence so when we take that into consideration we end up with about 36 minutes of actual music which is more normal. I wish bands would stop with this annoying habit, it wasn’t funny ten years ago and it will never be. Just an unnecessary minor blemish on this otherwise strong album.
Xtreem Music released some interesting albums the last couple of years (Verminous, Kronos, Paganizer) and this may very well be the strongest of them all.