Formed in 1999 from Rome, Lazio Italy, Hour Of Penance are a Technical Brutal Death Metal band that has had some minor change ups throughout the years and have created a pierced album titled Cast The First Stone. Released on January 27th, 2017 through Prosthetic Records Cast The First Stone is seventh full-length studio recording and following up to 2014’s Regicide. From their lyricism of Socialized Failures, Anti-religious Vatican themed, Torturous and Mortality lyrics, Cast The First Stone is not only a return to form from this Italian extreme metal outfit but this marks new boundaries of distinctive flavorings for Technical Death Metal. Clocking in at a whopping 34:00 in duration and 9 tracks, Cast The First Stone opens the presentation up with XXI Century Imperial Crusade, featuring consistent, hypersensitive and consists of relatively thin guitar riffs, unrelenting double bass drumming and humanely mid-paced vocal deliverance from songwriter Paolo Pieri unleashes his furious, aggressiveness, and gratifying range he has pulled off successfully in recent memory.
Then onto later tracks such as Horn of Flies, Shroud of Ashes and Damnatio Memoriae, the members from Hour Of Penance employed a album that’s filled with Death Metal signatures written all over the finest passages and powerful messages the album is concentrated on. Basically, Cast The First Stone is very reminiscent to Oracles by Symphonic Death Metal band FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE minus the orchestrations and cinematic atmosphere but with Hour Of Penance’s Cast The First Stone, this album particularly notices lyrical speed ranges and the instrumentation are some of the best this band has pulled off since 2010’s Paradogma arguably my favorite from this band. But 7 albums, 18 years as a band and contributed the Italian Metal community, Cast The First Stone by Hour Of Penance is a album that represents history, historical navigation, designed pictures and undoubtedly continuing what they love doing best for Metal music. Cast The First Stone is bar far, Hour Of Penance’s intelligent, hand-crafted, generated and refreshingly natural albums they’ve ever pulled off. I’m beyond intrigued and amazed how far they came to make a album not only very conceptual, but keeping the revolutionized and energized forces to make the presentation simplistic.
Go hear this album right now! It’s definitely one of my top favorites of 2017 and top 20 favorite bands of all time.
Overall score: 9.0/10
Review by Jake Butler
