Good lord, not another one of these. When a band plays black metal or death metal, you expect its members to be kindred to the dark side. There is usually not religion involved in death metal unless you are Deicide. And the whole Black Metal movement was all about Anti Christianity to begin with. It amazes me that Christian bands want to play death and black metal. What are they trying to get across exactly, the message is rather strange. So be the case with Puerto Rico’s AZMAVETH. Formed in 1999, Strong As Death is only their second release.

The music on Strong As Death is a mix of death metal with thrash and black metal overtones. I would say it is mainly death metal. The guitar work is surprisingly good and the main focus of the album; very fast paced, ala death metal style, with a large amount of solos. The vocals are screamed ala Akercocke style; the music is sort of similar to theirs too, minus the lyrical content. If I didn’t have the CD booklet with the lyrics, I would not have known AZMAVETH was a Christian band, because the vocals are unintelligible. There are intros for nearly every song and they feature flamenco acoustic guitar work. It’s interesting to say the least. The drums have full on blast beat assaults in every song. As brutal as this all sounds, it gets a bit dull after awhile. Luckily this album does not drag on for too long. I find AZMAVETH a very peculiar band, sounding evil and brutal with lyrics about the Bible and love of Jesus Christ is just too weird for most to swallow.