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I never would have guessed that during The Crown's original tenure as Crown of Thorns they recorded material sounding essentially like a blackened Dissection. I enjoy The Crown's (good) albums as much as the next guy, Hell is Here and Deathrace King being formidable efforts of savage melodic Death/Thrash Metal, but this is an altogether separate band, as the differing name would suggest. I wasn't prepared for how different, I don't think.

Like Dissection, the music is built on riffs, some black and some death, some melodic death, all pretty good. But it's the lead guitar where the comparison starts to make more sense. Semi-buried under constant percussion, loud-in-the-mix shrieking black vocals and of course the rhythm guitar, the leads appeal to a more conservative style of melody not dissimilar to early Melodic Death Metal, but the way they're carefully integrated into the riffing is eloquently done and reminds me of the tight musicianship and songwriting of their aforementioned Swedish brethren. Where they differ mainly is the Black Metal influence, which although Dissection may not lack entirely, Eternal Death wears more blatantly. The somewhat minimal production values are great for this album, and compared to Storm of the Light's Bane or even The Somberlain exhibit a more basic, undecorated ideology. I'd call this blackened melodic DM rather than pure BM or "deathened black", but the element is unmistakable.

Genre talk aside, Eternal Death has an impressive supply of riffs that speak to the neck, from the opening track "Angels Die" to "The Black Heart" and "World Within" – don't listen to this stuff whenever there's a crucial need to sit still. As a plus there's only minor amounts of filler, every song possessing unique aspects that assist in defining them each individually. The album flows, but it doesn't run together that often, producing a notable evenness throughout.

Fans of Dissection, The Crown, Eucharist and At the Gates may find a lot to like with this pre-The Crown undertaking.