I don’t know about you, but a lot of those “hybrid-genre” bands out there fail to impress me. There are tons of them today, too; bands who consider their music to be some blend of death and doom (death-doom), or black and death (blackened death) or what have you. Granted, some bands can do it right—Behemoth in my mind being the best example—but the ratio of musicians that do it right compared to those who don’t isn’t very proportional.
So when a band releases music that manages to tug at a couple of big genres at once successfully, it’s worth paying attention. Kosmokrator is one such band, fresh out of Belgium with their debut album/demo (sources vary on what it exactly is) To The Svmmit.
To The Svmmit is a short album, all things considered; it’s only three tracks that add up to just about half an hour of music altogether. However, you’ll probably want more after listening to it. Kosmokrator sort of takes the best parts of the big three genres of metal—death, doom, and black—and glues them seamlessly together. The album’s production/atmosphere is heavy and bearing down, reminiscent of recent doom/stoner metal albums, while the guitar work and general songwriting sounds like something out of a blackened death metal album, with tremolo-picked guitars up the wazoo and screams that run the gamut from growls to shrieks. However, unlike death or black metal, the band doesn’t really push their music at you; their sound seems heavily rooted in a sort of doom/stoner sensibility. As brutal as it is, it’s slower than a lot of death metal.
So, if you want something with a little bit of a different twist to it, definitely check out Kosmokrator and their Bandcamp page.