Review by JD on September 19, 2008.

Shades of classic MAN’O’WAR and the infamous PILEDRIVER paint every single note of this American mid-west’s THE HORDE’s first release . From Empire to Ashes is a rather fun and unserious album, one that is just chocked full of pure fun.

Mixing together all of the old metal lyrical standards of wizards, swords and battling dragons in to their music, the band thunders and pummels you through every heavy metal cliche there ever has been. THE HORDE swaggers, strut and thump their chests like wild cavemen as they sing of epic battles waged between good and evil..... It is MAN’O’WAR all over again... Good times a plenty here.

It may not be the next step for metaldom, but having that ‘just because it’s fun’ vibe to it that makes this album a great listen. Cheesy would be the term I would use THE HORDE overall... but in a world that has enough crap in it, having a fun time listening to this album is more than worth it. This clearly shows that fun and fantasy has not totally disappeared from metal. I like cheese, and this was pure gourmet at it’s finest.

Hail the missing art of cheesiness in all of it’s form. It is not the best album out there but it packs a lot of fun into thirty two minutes and thirty seconds. Call the cows in from the field right away... THE HORDE might need more milk to make more of that cheesy goodness they deliver so well.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 6
Atmosphere: 7
Production: 6
Originality:4
Overall: 7

Rating: 6

Review by Krys on July 31, 2001.

This album... or maybe this is not an album, the cover says it’s an Original Motion Picture Soundtrack... Regardless of what it is, Diabolical Masquerade delivered an absolute masterpiece incomparable to anything you’ve heard before.

This album/soundtrack is split up into 20 movements where each movement is broken down into subsections that create the 61-track index. Based on the official website, this index was meant to be a music layer to a movie about death following a certain pattern in taking lives from this world, but this pattern was broken. Sound familiar? Yeah, you got it, “Final Destination” was one of the main reasons that “Death’s Design” has never seen daylight. Enough of dry facts...

61 tracks squeezed into 42 minutes most of us associate with a collection of hyper-fast, eardrum-molesting grind-core, but in reality “Death’s Design” is one of the most original black metal albums in the last few years. Of course it’s not all black metal here. Progressive black metal would be the closest genre label I could muster if I had to classify this album. Blackheim (Anders Nyström from Katatonia) with help from Dan Swano, a small orchestra called The Estonian Quartet and few other musicians, jump from one music style to another with such ease that attempting to find a description of all forms performed here is just insane. At one moment you’ll hear mid or fast tempos of black metal that will go into ambient, oriental or just progressive metal making you standing speechless and wondering what the hell just happened. Don’t let the number of tracks fool you because most of the time you won’t even notice the smooth transitions from one to another. A mix of clean and black metal vocals, which in my opinion are one of the best in this genre, are perfectly composed to the underlying music. Influences from the members’ original bands are well noticed and are perfectly arranged so with the blend of black metal speed and aggression create something new and utterly unique.

Just don’t expect to grasp this piece in one spin. It’s impossible. It’s already a third day that I’m listening to this opus and I’m still far from saying I know “Death’s Design”.

Bottom Line: If indeed this music was meant to be a movie soundtrack, “Death’s Design” would made it an instant classic, if not, it’s a music masterpiece nevertheless. Either way you look at this, as a regular CD or a soundtrack, you have to have this release.

Rating: 10 out of 10