Uh… just what the hell happened to this band? Other than quickly mentioning some clean guitar rhythms and skillful melodic guitar leads divvying up a few decent pieces of this album, this review is about disappointment. In fact, it’s especially harsh toward a band I thought had a lot going for themselves. From start to finish, The Shepherd And The Hounds Of Hell is completely derivative black/death metal riff after riff coupled with basic, boring drum beats and song structure, and powerless vocals - that being most surprising. Classic textbook case #1 - a band becomes satisfied after one or two releases, consequently losing its original edge. Additionally, since Heks is long gone, Obtained Enslavement has little relation to what made them unique in the first place, namely Heks’ songwriting intuition and incredible piano/keyboard skills (even if it did sound like Three Blind Mice at times). I heard Soulblight still had lots of keyboards, so maybe the change to this album is stunning for hard core Obtained Enslavement fans?? With The Shepherd And The Hounds Of Hell, they head toward a heavier, aggressive sound, straight up riffing and no keyboards, but ignore the ideas of bite and hostility - which Pest is a good vocalist for (and made me wonder where he fit in the older stuff to begin with) - yet now the vocals breathe nothing special, they just sound tossed into the mix wherever a preconceived formula from dozens of other albums sees fit… classic text book case #2. An exception beckons with Pest’s clean voice. Dark, outreaching and potentially haunting, its spared use is a downer (track 1, 4, 5 and 8?). Lastly, classic text book case #342134 - these utterly sterile, lifeless, generic DRUM TRIGGERS are taking away from any semblance of human personality, once again thanks to Terje Refsnes and Sound Suite studios. This routine he and Napalm Records love so much is nice and all for a clean production and bright lead guitar sound, but horrible for recording metal, where people actually like to feel drums in their chests and abrasive guitar tones ripping the air. As if Siebenburgen, The Sins Of Thy Retarded, Tristania… weren’t enough of a… oh wait, I was talking about metal, nevermind. Someone tell these people that only two extreme metal drummers can sound really good with full triggers, and they both play in bands beginning with "M". I’ve seen people going nuts over this album… I suppose if you’ve never heard any other metal album in your life, I can see where this might be impressive… aside from that, someone care to tell me what the fuck I’m missing?

Written By: Abbas