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I received this promo a while back but with a band called August Moon and an album titled Something Eldritch and Macabre, it seemed fitting to review it as Halloween fast approaches (as I'm writing this). I have to confess I was expecting black metal, but in fact this band plays a very melodic style of death metal with no small amount of black and traditional metal elements woven into their dark tapestry. The guitar sound is warm and full, with a measure of tremolo picking but none of the cold, antiseptic sting of pure black metal. The low growls are wonderfully menacing and definitely not something you'd want to hear walking down a darkened corridor late at night all alone, but they fit the music quite well. As I said, there are a number of traditional metal riffs throughout the album and some Hammond-style keyboards ("Journey to the Other-Worldly Realms and Beyond" and "Constellations Dislodged from the Night Sky," for example) that hearken back to the occult, underground hard rock and proto-heavy metal of the late '70s, giving Something Eldritch and Macabre a creepy, old-school flavor that reaches directly into your soul. August Moon has come up with a formula on Something Eldritch and Macabre that works very well and has a lot of appeal across a wide swath of metal fans, making for a strong debut from a band showing a lot of promise.