Normally, I wouldn’t mention this, because when I size up metal, the music comes first, the lyrics are a distant second (and only when I can hear them, which is not often), and the personal beliefs of band members (with rare exceptions) aren’t even on the list.

I’ll also mention, before someone else does, that despite their trappings of black metal, AHTDU is a Christian band, by which I mean the lyrics have a Christian focus. Both albums are available for download at Amazon mp3 and iTunes. To follow the doings of AHTDU and stream more music, you can find them on Facebook here or on ReverbNation here. The first is a track from the debut album, and after that is a song from Omens, which is available for free download on the band’s Facebook and ReverbNation pages. Comparisons aside, A Hill To Die Upon are solid practitioners of blackened death metal and a band to watch. The band also list Old Man’s Child as an influence, and there’s a stylistic resemblance in the music to the work of that excellent band, too, with AHTDU perhaps falling in between the musical realms of OMC and Behemoth, without coming off as a clone of either one. The band deliver heavy, crushing rhythms with a controlled, martial drumbeat fat, groaning riffs augmented by bursts of rapid-fire, blackened-thrash leads and slithering solo’s and predatory, lionine vocals. So far, I’ve only listened to a handful of songs from the two albums, but from what I’ve heard, the music has a similar imperial weight and obsidian edge. The two-headed eagle can mean many things, but among others it connects (in my mind) to the imagery of Polish death-metal heavyweights Behemoth because AHTDU’s music reminds me of that band. The cover of the debut is above and you can see the cover of Omens after the jump. Even before listening to the music, I was struck by the eye-catching cover art for the two albums. The core of the band are two brothers, Adam Cook (guitar, bass, lead vocals) and Michael Cook (drums, backing vox).

Their most recent album, Omens, was released in June of this year and followed their 2009 debut album Infinite Titanic Immortal. Today seemed like a good day to do it, for reasons I’ll explain later. I’ve been meaning to write something about this Illinois band since NCS reader Austin sent me a link to one of their songs a couple weeks ago.

Christian death ashes rar