{"id":97630,"date":"2023-01-13T00:00:24","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T00:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=97630"},"modified":"2023-01-20T12:36:19","modified_gmt":"2023-01-20T12:36:19","slug":"album-review-the-gauntlet-dark-steel-and-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-the-gauntlet-dark-steel-and-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"THE GAUNTLET – Dark Steel And Fire (2023) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE GAUNTLET
Dark Steel And Fire<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nEternal Death \/ Nihil Verim Nisi Mors Productions (2023)<\/span>
Rating: 7.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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After featuring on two split projects and releasing an EP \u2013 War And Guilt<\/em> \u2013 in 2020, New Jersey-based one man band The Gauntlet latches onto your face and separates flesh from bone with this scuzzy debut full-length offering. Don\u2019t be put off by the poor, cartoon cover art, this is a seriously nefarious and wretched cauldron of blackness and rollness!<\/p>\n

Opening track \u2018Where Heroes Go To Die\u2019 is a lumbering heap of dissonant black fuzz daubed in vicious black metal snarls which harken back to the second wave of black metal evil. It\u2019s difficult to see then why Ace Meggido chose such goofy artwork. The stuffy, wailing solos drift through the freezing air and the crunchy yet basement riffs evoke images of black, billowing smoke and obscure forest meanderings daubed in caked corpse-paint.<\/p>\n

A lot of the material on offer here has a doomy trudge to its design, but there is also that infectious Bathory-style of wickedness which seeps throughout this despicably catchy opus. It\u2019s hard then not to tap along to the lashing gallop of \u2018The Signal To Attack\u2019 and the bestial strikes of \u2018Winds Without Mercy\u2019 and \u2018Those Who Will Not Return\u2019.<\/p>\n

You can dump this one in the same fat of fizzing acid with Born For Burning\u2019s The Ritual<\/em> opus from 2019. This is total Bathory worship and yet with other interesting whips of gloom added for good, malicious measure.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE GAUNTLETDark Steel And Fire Eternal Death \/ Nihil Verim Nisi Mors Productions (2023)Rating: 7.5\/10 After featuring on two split projects and releasing an EP \u2013 War And Guilt \u2013 in 2020, New Jersey-based one man band The Gauntlet latches onto your face and separates flesh from bone with this scuzzy debut full-length offering. Don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-the-gauntlet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97631,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97630\/revisions\/97631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}