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A Vicious End - The Hills Will Burn - Reviewed By Necromance Magazine! Thursday February 4 2021, 7:33 PM

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A Vicious End - The Hills Will Burn - Reviewed By Necromance Magazine ! Check it out here at this link: http://necromance.eu/a-vicious-end-usa-the-hills-will-burn/

The US group A VICIOUS END released their first LP, self-released, which they have titled "The Hills Will Burn". The album was mixed and mastered by Filipe Gruber and the artwork has been developed by Vhummel.

Formed in 2020 in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in a group it is a duo with Armando Diaz on guitars, bass, drums and lyrics; and Igor Sokolov in the voices. To finish the work, they have had different artists from around the world who collaborate on different themes.

We start by listening to “A New Beginning” where some powerful guitars welcome us, coupled with a drum base with a fairly solid sound, which forms a perfect base. They create quite marked changes, with abrupt cuts but that give a sense of power, achieving an instrumental theme loaded with force that gives way to the rest of the songs, such as “Fields of Gray”, where if they introduce a super aggressive voice, they puts on top of some very powerful compositions, where aggressiveness reigns, adding very forceful guitars, which flow on a base of bass and drums loaded with force. In this song we find the clean voice of Christina Rotondo, who manages to create an amazing contrast together with the guttural voice, generating an amazing line of voice between the two. A pretty powerful theme,

A serious mix of drums, bass and guitars give us the first riff of "The Black Pearl" where we realize that we are facing a powerful song, mixing super aggressive voices with a very hard instrumentation, with a strident and aggressive sound, which blends perfectly with Igor's voice. The tempo of the song, despite being quite slow, helps to aggressively make the melody even more aggressive, achieving a super aggressive song from beginning to end, which ends in a strange way, with a quite disruptive cut.

Shortly after we come across “Don't Back Down” which opens us up with super aggressive voices and shortly after giving us a very aggressive instrumentation, with a lot of emphasis on guitars, which leave us with super rough sounds. In the vocal line they delight us with a good mix, betting on super aggressive guttural voices but intermixing with clean voices, resulting in a good mix. They know how to keep the power very high throughout the whole song, which they also manage to do in the final song "Behold the Archer", which begins with some very calm melodies by Joylin, who collaborates on the song, to immediately move on to some much more aggressive structures, mixing guitars with powerful bass rhythms and higher sounds, where the drums generate a great contrast playing with the sounds of the riffs.

It is surprising how with all the complicated things of the year 2020 and with musicians from different places, A VICIOUS END have managed to give very good results, despite being their first job; and in which we find some wonderful sounds, leaving us with a mixture of powerful riffs and lighter sounds, passing through violins and guttural and melodic voices. They have undoubtedly been able to mix very well, getting good structures that result in twelve very solid songs, well produced and very entertaining, to leave us with a work that undoubtedly stands out in a very good way. - 8.5/10 - Necromance Magazine

A Vicious End Is a progressive metalcore band from the Bay Area, California. They are independently produced and are distributed through CD Baby. Founded in 2020, the band wrote and released the album “The Hills Will Burn” within a year of formation. In the face of a global pandemic, the band utilized the online platform “Fiverr” to bring together musicians from around the world for the creation of their debut album.

The “Hills Will Burn” features Igor Sokolov (St Petersburg, Russia) on vocals, Armando Diaz on Guitar/Bass/Drums, and guest performances by Christina Rotondo (U.K.- featured on “Fields Of Gray”), Daniel Picknell (U.K.- featured on “Without You”), Joylin (Ukraine- featured on “Behold The Archer”), and Carlos Carty (Peru- featured on “Trail of Tears”). The album was mixed and mastered by Filipe Gruber (Venezuela), the artwork was composed by Vhummel (Brazil).

The album features ominous, down-tuned guitar riffs paired with ferocious vocals centered around the growing social unrest spreading across America.

A Vicious End’s first full-length work starts off with the short instrumental “A New Beginning”, which creates an epic heavy metal atmosphere but is soon interrupted by “At Dawn We Ride”. Noticeably a lot heavier, the second song continues on a more melodic death metal / metalcore note. Next on is the gentler “Fields of Gray” where we can enjoy Christina Rotondo’s beautiful clean vocals, complementing the main vocal line just perfectly. Then we can hear “Smoke and Mirrors” and “Salt The Earth” – two more upbeat and energetic songs followed by “The Black Pearl”. The latter seems to be the heaviest piece so far – the slow and heavy guitar parts even set an almost djent-like mood – certainly a great genre development. The following “Trail of Tears” is probably the most unexpected track on the record, combining the metal and metalcore genres with Carlos Carty’s traditional music elements which showcases Armando’s more experimental side. The next one, “Don't Back Down” sounds more aggressive in its beginning but the hypnotizing clean vocals gradually make it more progressive and melodic. In turn, “Without You” and Dan Picknell’s clean vocals again make for an interesting addition to the album and create a great contrast to everything else we have heard so far which was mostly incredibly heavy - not that anyone is complaining! We also cannot fail to mention the magnificent guitar parts which are present all over the record and are the one consistent element that make it truly memorable and compositionally outstanding. “Let The Waters Consume” and “Insidious” are also great examples of Armando’s guitar excellence. The twelfth and final song “Behold The Archer” ends with a touching and kind of open-ended violin part descending into silence.

We can safely say that “The Hills Will Burn” is an intriguing and promising start to A Vicious End’s musical path!