Armoured Angel - Stigmartyr (1992)^{Release ID: 4599}

Canberra death metallers Armoured Angel were very much a local icon during the late 1980's & the whole of the 1990's. They're often touted as being the very first Australian extreme metal band which is probably a little debatable given that they started out as a more traditional heavy metal band & with a very different line-up to the one that was at least partially responsible for pushing the death metal genre in this country. Armoured Angel's first demo tape "Baptism in Blood" (released way back in 1985) is a showcase of those early attempts at heavy metal but it wasn't until 1989's "Wings of Death" & 1990's "Communion" demos (both fairly iconic releases in this part of the world) that we'd see them blazing a trail through the world of thrash metal. That transition would take its next logical step with their first proper release though & it would see Armoured Angel properly defining the sound that would make them arguably the most celebrated of all Australian death metal artists. The highly regarded four-song "Stigmartyr" E.P. would see the light of day in 1992 & would ultimately go on to become the jewel in Armoured Angel's crown.

I had the pleasure of witnessing Armoured Angel in a live environment on many occasions over the years, an experience that was invariably rewarding & was generally a fairly significant event in the Sydney metal calendar too. Their uncommon three-piece setup was a touch unusual with drummer Joel Green handling the vocal duties & allowing guitarist & brother Matt Green & founding member & bassist Glen "Lucy" Luck to front the stage either side of him. The most memorable event I can recall was an infamous night at the Phoenician Club where Armoured Angel & fellow Aussies Destrier blew Florida's Satanic heavyweights Deicide off the stage on their "Once Upon The Cross" tour but that's a story for another time. The point I'm trying to make here is that the release of the "Stigmartyr" E.P. was highly anticipated by the local metal community which saw me picking up a CD copy immediately upon release. It didn't muck around in making an impression on this aspiring 16 year-old metal musician either & I'd suggest that it played an important role in convincing me that I needed to form my own death metal band. I mean, if these three dudes from Canberra could make a CD that was of a world class standard then so could I, right?

For all of its influence & celebration at a local level, the "Stigmartyr" E.P. is only a very short overview of where Armoured Angel were at at the time with the four song tracklisting only amounting to a mere fifteen minutes in duration. It's the consistent quality of those fifteen minutes that matters here though with all four songs being worthy of your attention. "Stigmartyr" saw Armoured Angel maintaining some of their previous thrash metal tools but utilizing them within a death metal context. It's by no means the most brutal death metal release you'll ever hear but that's not the intention either. This music is all about atmosphere with repetition being used to create tension & with subtle changes creeping in over time. The riffs are kept fairly simple but the band are a tight-knit unit by this point & execute them splendidly. Joel's vocals possess a whispery quality that's always intelligible & gives Armoured Angel a level of accessibility that's not afforded to all death metal acts. His beats are kept quite basic & uncluttered which allows the hooks in the riffs & song-writing to really dig their teeth in & also keeps life as a drumming front man fairly easily achieved in a live environment. Probably the only weakness is with Matt's guitar solos as they're not terribly sophisticated & their pentatonic melodic structure doesn't exactly accentuate a death metal atmosphere. His rhythm guitar sound is nice & thick though which gives the riffs plenty of weight.

The E.P. kicks off beautifully with opener "Hymn of Hate" being a very solid example of what you can expect from "Stigmartyr". It's closely followed by "Beyond the Sacrament" which is comfortably the least impressive of the four songs but is still pretty decent before the title track steps the aggression up a bit, showcasing an early Morbid Angel influence along the way. It's the brilliant closer "Ordained in Darkness" that's the real gold here though, showcasing a clear understanding of dynamics & building a trance-inducing soundscape of darkness in the process. It's an amazing journey in my opinion & I've always regarded it as one of this countries most important metal songs. That's not to scoff at the other three mind you. These four tracks are all built on an accomplished understanding of song-writing concepts with the composition being tailored to highlight the hooks. That's right... I said "hooks"... in death metal... You see Armoured Angel are all about them in a similar way to English death metal masters Bolt Thrower who are probably the band that I most closely associate with the Armoured Angel sound given their mutual penchant for repetition & melody within what are still essentially death metal riffs.

Sound interesting? Well, it should because this is not Australia's premier death metal release for no reason with all of Armoured Angel's post-"Baptism in Blood" releases being high quality representations of Aussie death metal. If you enjoy some of our other bands like Slaughter Lord or Mortification then you owe it to yourself to check out "Stigmarytr" too.