By now, a lot of you guys probably know the American band Abigail Williams. I have to talk about them yet again because they never cease to surprise me. This band has started out back in 2006 with the release of their first EP as a Symphonic Black Metal/Metalcore band, or what some refer to as Blackcore. With their second album In The Shadow Of A Thousand Sun, they have focused more on the Symphomic Black Metal elements, but keeping the agressivity, speed, drums and some riffs and melodies from the "core" genres. Their third release, In the Absence of Light was very strange to me. Because when they released it in 2010, I really was expecting them to retain their core elements, or some of them at least, but what we received was more of an Emperor worship album. The core elements are almost gone, and the symphonic elements, are somewhat tuned down.
To me, this band was always awesome. I know that some, even in the Metal Hell follow the Metalcore hating dogma that has become a tradition amongs metalheads. But this band, was never a trend follower. It seems that the band's leader and frontman Ken Sorceron has a deep love for bands from various horizons and he just does whatever he wants. And he does it well. This band as never sounded anything like a mallcore band that tries hard to break through and take advantage of the trend. I really wasn't expecting what I heard when I picked up their last album, Becoming. They released this LP at the beginning of the year and it just blew my mind again. This new material isn't anything like they've done before. They have dropped most symphonic elements, retained the keyboards of course, but they changed the production and oriented their writting toward Atmospheric Black Metal and Post-Rock. And well, it doesn't suck. This album really isn't half bad.
Some of the people who used to hate Abigail Williams have given it pretty good reviews. I suggest you guys give it a listen. It's worth it, even just for curiosity value.
