Convent - Abandon Your Lord

CONVENT - Abandon Your Lord (OLD TEMPLE - CD 2009)

Polish death metal is a dangerous weapon. You won’t even blink an eye before you find your head chopped off, guts ripped off and all limbs cut off. You’ll bleed and bleed out dry before the album is finished. Yeah, we have many killer bands here… So, in case you don’t know them all, let me introduce you one more destructive force, called Convent! With my review of “Blessed Amongst the Flock” demo I already mentioned why I think this band is so underrated and unknown, but this is a pity, as their music has just as much to offer as the albums of Trauma, Vader, Armagedon, Calm Hatchery and so on and on. They were simply unlucky and more so, are quiet for too many years hiding somewhere in the shadows. Anyway, “Abandon Your Lord” album was recorded back in 2006! It took the band three years to find a label, which wanted to release it (Old Temple in 2009, released it in limited quantity of 1000 copies). And here are some my thoughts on it…

I described in previous review of Convent how much I liked “Blessed Amongst the Flock” demo. It was short, but so fuckin impressive, so violent and intense. “Abandon Your Lord” is pretty much the same. The music is again truly extreme, aggressive, brutal death metal, played often in fast and utterly uncompromising, merciless ways. Convent is quite technical, the riffs sound quite modern – or classic US / Polish death metal – but at the same time the band has this old school feeling, dark, blasphemous and obscure atmosphere, which immediately reminds me such bands like Damnation (Polish of corpse!), Azarath and Dissenter. There’s similar precision in execution and torture, similar aggression and attitude towards this music. And it simply sounds impressive. Damn, “Abandon Your Lord” is old school in some matters, but has no limits, so there’re some technical fireworks here and there, quite many tempo changes, sick, lunatic guitar leads, some more unconventional arrangements… All these things work only for the best results. Certainly Convent did awesome job on “Abandon Your Lord”. Let me also mention really good, powerful and heavy production of this album! Such death metal must have a strong, powerful sound and “Abandon Your Lord” certainly has.

When you’ll listen to “Abandon Your Lord” and survive all nine songs, which Convent prepared, then you can get yourself ready also for sort of bonus song, for something titled “Tribute”, which will surprise many of you. What it is? Nothing more, nor less, but Slayer’s “Seasons in the Abyss” played with help and arrangement of philharmonic orchestra! Wow, that is something unusual. I can’t say that I am a big fan of such arranged tracks; probably I’m not, but it surely has been a nice surprise and something I would never expect to hear from such brutal and extreme, underground death metal band. A nice addition to the whole album, surely. 

Standout tracks: “Abandon Your Lord”, “Lapsed”, “Oppositive to the Nature”, “Captive of the Force of Satan”

Final rate: 80/100