This album is exactly what you would get if you merged Cannibal Corpse and Deicide and asked them to form a musical plot to eradicate Christianity permanently from the face of the earth. It’s hardly what you’d expect from the Swedes, this worship of Americanised grunt n’blast, yet so expert and refined is their attack that it’s hard for Death Metalheads not to enjoy it – it’s easily better than Deicide and Cannibal Corpse’s last albums. Yet it seems at times like Aeon are trying to outdo their influences – the chorus on Abomination To God is Deicideal to the max, vocalist Tommy Dahlstrom’s mixed growls and screams both Bentonite and Corpsegrinding. Obviously this will depend on taste, but there’s nothing wrong with repeating this classic Floridian sound in my view – although both brutal and technical, this is neither Brutal nor Technical Death Metal. If you’re a Death Metal fan, you will more than likely be familiar with it. Aeon, however, throughout the course of the album prove again and again that they have the songwriting skills and technical chops to carry it off, and whilst ultimately you won’t be finding the next stage in Death Metal’s evolution here, you will find forty minutes’ worth of quality headbanging.

From the first moment of the album the band are in high gear, rollicking riffage and cascading drum blasts pounding throughout the powerful Forgiveness Denied. There’s not a great deal of difference between tracks on first listens, although veteran listeners will soon come to note them – the Morbid Angel-esque blastfest of Kill Them All, for instance, soon turns to Cannibal Corpseian promises of violence that are delivered in full with some great leadwork from the guitarists. Inheritance pounds along like Decapitated pre-accident, Of Fire makes good usage of epic keyboards, even interlude Total Kristus Inversus is tasteful and well-placed in the tracklisting.

A lot of the enjoyment that I got from Path Of Fire was in the way that they outdid their influences at their own game – listen to I Will Burn and tell me that’s not better than anything from Cannibal Corpse recently with a straight face, I dare you. There’s a nifty bit of Vital Remains-esque melody on Suffer The Soul, and Liar In The Name Of God is easily the best Death Metal song I’ve heard all year, up there with Legion or Deicide in stylistic quality – this album is, ultimately, the ideal Death Metal playlist for any of my fellow grunt n’blast fans who share the good taste that binds us old-school types together worldwide. It may not be revolutionary, but it’s done extremely well, and that’s what counts. Recommended.